Heroes Not Zombies

What do you see when you look up at a sky like this?

The first things to catch my eye are the patterns in the clouds. I just love seeing these ripples, waves and swirls. I can delight in densities and the transparencies. I love how the blue beyond shows through and appears as lakes, streams and rivers in the white land of the cloud.

Then the next thing that happens for me is noticing that some of these patterns here look familiar. They remind me of something else, in the same way that sketches and doodles do, in the same way that paintings and photographs do. My eyes are drawn to the blue zone in the cloud which I can easily see as a pair of lungs – well, I’m sure that’s at least in part due to my working as a doctor all my life – but the idea of a pair of lungs breathing this cloud into existence delights me! Bear with me for a moment longer, because, and this comes and goes for me, I can then see what looks like a head above “the lungs” with a face looking out towards the right hand side of the image. Sometimes that looks SO clear to me that it almost spooks me out! And then I look again and I just can’t see it.

If you’ve been reading the posts on this blog for a bit, you’ll know what’s coming next……the image sets of a train of thought for me.

This time what I start to think about is creation.

I love to see clouds emerge, change, and disappear before my very eyes. So often they look like a work of art, like a piece of performance art. I see it happen and it amazes and delights me.

This, I think, is the essence of the Universe – creation.

The Universe has been creating since its beginning. As best we know, first elements, like hydrogen and helium, then clouds and densities which form into stars, those sources of all the elements we know….and so on, with the rest of the Universe Story…..right up to the creation of the Earth – as far was we know, the only planet like this in the entirety of existence – yeah, I know, people tell you that there are chances there are other Earth-like planets out there somewhere, but we haven’t found any yet.

And on this Earth, creation continues, with the elements forming into molecules, molecules combining and synthesising to create cells, and so to living organisms, no two organisms living identical lives……to the most complex of living organisms in the universe (as best we know)….human beings, no two of whom have ever been, or ever will be, identical.

And so to this day, this day which has never existed before, and will never exist again, where every event, every experience, every body, is new today.

Creation. It’s the essence of the Universe. It’s the essence of Life. The constant, never-ending, creation of novelty, of emergence, of uniqueness.

Yep, all that from a cloud…..how’s that for a creative thought?