awareness

I heard a learned astronomer say recently, “We are atoms that are aware that we are atoms…we are the universe aware of itself.” That’s a profoundly religious declaration, without reference…

Woodland hawks screech from all directions in the parkland, and birds sing raucously. Friendliness and joy are reflected on the faces of the many people using the park for every…

Scientists now speak of the ‘Anthropocene Age’—the domination of the earth by man. It’s meant to be scientifically neutral term, as if a sentient species rapidly warming the atmosphere, depleting…

It’s near sunset, and the light subtly changes on a gray, cold day. Sky, trees and land brighten, as if lit by a florescent lamp. The white bark of a…

After a half hour sitting beside the stream on an overcast morning before a predicted storm, the light suddenly changes. The skies become almost white in their grayness, and a…

How can a single, beautifully written sentence affect one’s entire being? Early this morning, as the sun rose, a line from Hamlet stopped me in my tracks. The beauty of…

When I was a young man, an elderly friend uttered a quip that stuck: It’s not that the devil is smarter than everyone else; it’s that it has so much…

Alfred Russel Wallace was the co-discoverer, with Charles Darwin, of natural selection. He wrote within a decade of the “Origin of Species” that the mystery of consciousness was proof that…