Our world teems with life. Scientists have labeled over 1.8 million different species and estimate that we are about one percent finished. Obviously it is the really little ones we haven’t named yet. One could spend one’s entire life just in his or her yard and never exhaust the range of life that lives there. It is estimated just one cubic foot of dirt is all we would need to give us a lifetime of activity if we had the right equipment and patience.
We don’t cohabit well with some life forms. Just this weekend I sat down on a lawn chair only to discover with great discomfort there was a yellow jacket nest on the bottom side of my bottom. Ouch. It is amazing how fast an old man can move. Need I say the yellow jackets did not fare well in the following minutes?
There is so much we don’t know about our world. Being associated with a college is such a treat because I am surrounded by chemists, cellular biologists, genetic experts, astronomers, geologists, historians, linguists, grammarians and on and on. It humbles us when we realize how little we know and there is so little time in life to learn more. When I was a boy I thought the gift of eternal life was a “cool idea” now that I am a man I realize it is a necessity.
“Now God formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. . . . So man gave names to all the livestock, the birds and all the beasts.” Genesis 2
Written by Roger Bothwell on July 28, 2003
Spring of Life, 151 Old Farm Rd. Leominster, MA 01453