One of the things fascinates and inspires me is the life force in nature. Everywhere I look I see different life forms emerging, growing, reproducing, and eventually dying. From the smallest virus or bacteria to the ancient redwood trees, life teems on this planet, even in the most unlikely places.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour— William Blake
In the springtime in Minnesota, as the world wakes up from a long frozen winter I can almost sense the life force in the air of the awakening forests and woodlands. Everything is in a hurry to wake up, grow, reproduce, and start still another cycle of life.
What is this force that animates life?
Life Force
It’s a mystery. Science cannot tell us how life became alive! Yet there is a spark of life in every living thing. And when that spark is extinguished so is that thing’s life. I have seen how a body changes in the space of a breath not taken from living to lifeless. The soul or spirit leaves.
Have you ever planted a tiny seed in the ground? The tiny packet that appears to be inert and dead will sprout and grow given the right conditions of soil, water, and light. Doesn’t it fill you with wonder?
The more I learn about life, the less I think I know about life.
I see the life force in action all around me yet I do not understand it’s source. It is definitely not the mechanistic world Western thinking describes as a series of causes and effects.
The theory of how living beings evolve still does not explain what life is.
— Kalevi Kull, quoted in The Biology of Wonder
For me the spark of life, and the urge to live is a sign of God or spirit or whatever you want to call it. There is much that I do not understand and perhaps that is unknowable but the wonder of it all fills me with joy.
“A living being is a closed circular process,” he told me. “Life means molecules that on their own accord bring forth more of their kind. Life means structures that preserve and repair themselves. Life means flesh that creates flesh, and first and foremost, does so on its own behalf with no regard for an external world.”… [Living beings] are not predetermined by compulsive physical laws of an external environment but rather by their own inner urges to realize themselves as a feeling body, as a center of experience and concern.
— The Biology of Wonder by Andreas Weber
My dear friends, I invite you to ponder the life force as you go about your daily life this week. Let wonder and joy live inside you and lift you a little bit even in the midst of life’s challenges and woes.
May you walk in beauty.
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