Once upon the vast and silent void of our cosmos, a lucky speck of interstellar dust was drawn quietly into the mysterious dance of gravity, time, and chemistry that creates the miracle of a planet.

This fortunate mote was born in the Virgo Supercluster, in what became the Orion Arm of our Milky Way Galaxy. It evolved over eons into a blue sphere of vast seas and stunning geography, eventual home to billions of astonishing life forms.

In size, these organisms range from mycoplasma genitalium, a bacteria measuring 200 nanometers, to the blue whale, 98 feet long and 150 tons. For beauty, they are breathtaking, from…

But after four and a half billion years, the most phenomenal resident of this rarest of planets turns out to be a complex, smooth-skinned, bio-mechanical wonder of unimaginable creativity and sophistication: we, the people, in our magnificently diverse cultures and homelands. To the likely surprise of long entrenched neighbors, we rapidly have become Earth’s dominant species, with 86 billion neurons and indeterminate morality driving each of us onward.

(Imagine all those other sentient souls — forever seeking survival, hour by hour — wondering about humankind: “You bi-peds. You’re the ones with consciousness! Why are you destroying our only home?”)

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Now, in the deepening dramas of this decade, we face the perilous contradictions of our existence — for there is no end to the magnificence and horror of the human drama. We are the darkness and the light.

Rising to every challenge, sinking to any depth, we bless nature’s miracles, yet destroy at will. Our righteousness lords over other life; yet we beseech gods for mercy. Our anger flares to violence; yet we demand justice. We covet ceaselessly, yet give generously. All the while, we accept this polarity as human nature and move on in our ‘glassy essence.’

Not least, so many suffer relentlessly as refugees from disaster or violence, escaping along unfamiliar horizons to avoid closer death, wondering each day at living another, grasping what is left – a child, ragged clothes, a cup, a SIM card. So many are victims of injustice, of the vagaries of despotism or ill luck, unable to bring their wisps of hope to legal or social recourse.

Especially with the rapidly increasing vulnerability of life on Earth, how do we come to terms with this ‘marble and mud’ of our existence? How do we rescue our humanity? Most urgently, how do we end war, solve climate change, save democracy?

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Within the stirrings of the last half century, there seemed a new grace born upon the world, a clearer understanding that our living  —  this heavenly breath of existence  —  must embrace an inherent responsibility for each of us toward the lives of all sentient beings.

Yet this precious awareness often seems a grace too far  —  still foundering on the tsunamic greed and myopia of the few, not yet wholeheartedly addressing the urgent needs of the many.

As our destinies become ever more commanding and entwined, may each of us ask, in profound reverence for Earth’s transcendent web of life…

“How deeply do I care about our interdependent future?”

“What am I doing to help reclaim our humanity?”