Rig Veda 129 (Hindu sacred text): Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminate chaos. All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit. Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Genesis 2:7 (Hebrew scripture): Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Mark 4: 30-32 (Christian scripture): With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. (Jesus)
It’s awesome!
That I came from a seed
and so did you.
Fifteen billion years ago,
The universe was so small
It was hardly more than a fuzzy speckle,
Barely as big as a freckle on a flea.
And all that there was and all that could be
Was rolled up inside like a baby in a blanket.
Everything that came before
Dreams and dinosaurs,
Planets and popsicles,
Gardens and galaxies,
Was packed inside so tightly
That one thing had just about no room
To be any different than another thing.
Outer space was squished inner.
Time was scrunched down so much
That then was when
And yesterday was balled up with tomorrow
And forever was now and never.
There was so much inside the seed
That it was so heavy that nothing
Could escape its gravity.
It was hotter than a billion billion chile peppers
You couldn’t see it because you were in it
And even if you were out of it you couldn’t see it
Because all the light was stuck inside of it!
It was the seed of the universe.
Everything inside of it was the same… almost!
It was rounder than a pregnant mom's belly… almost!
Because in some small way,
One thing about it was just a little bit different than the rest of it.
Like both sides of your body are almost exactly the same,
But one side is just a little bit different than the other:
You’re right handed, or you’re left handed.
The universe was perfectly imperfect,
Just like you and I:
One leg just a tiny bit longer than the other one…
Like a baby in a mom's belly, that leg kicked!
And the universe seed
Was so packed with the power of possibility,
So mightily mashed with millions of millions of maybes,
That one little kick is all it took
To expand with fantastic speed in every direction
Sending dots of stardust everywhere
Spreading out like a stupendous cloud.
Awesome!
As the stardust swelled
It became the energy and matter
That is inside atoms.
As it expanded more,
The stardust formed into the first atoms.
Because that first kick pushed some bits of the seed
In some directions a tiny bit more than others,
Some of the atoms were closer together than others,
And so thicker clouds of atom-dust formed in some parts
Of the expanding universe more than others
And those clouds got thicker and thicker
As gravity pulled them together
And they got denser and denser and turned into big balls
And the big balls got bigger and denser as they had more gravity
And then they squished into balls so tight that they caught on fire
And became stars.
The universe filled with starlight as it kept spreading outward
For billions of years.
Stars formed in spectacular spinning galaxies
And when some stars burned up too many of their simple atoms,
They exploded, making new kinds of atoms,
Clouds of more complicated stardust,
And when that dust started to clump together again
It formed new stars, and also planets spinning around them,
Like our Earth, which formed four and a half billion years ago:
It was a ball of stardust too small to get hot enough to become a star.
(But if you could go to the center of the earth,
you’d need lemonade with lots of ice – it’s plenty hot down there!)
Clouds of stardust also formed even smaller chunks,
Like asteroids, meteorites, and comets,
Swirling around star-suns.
Starlight shining on complicated stardust atoms
Brought some of the atoms together
To make tiny strings and clumps
Called molecules.
Some of those molecules
Got more and more complicated.
And some of them,
Getting a free ride across the universe
On meteorites and comets,
Landed on the earth and sank into the sea.
The earth then was just rocks and dust and water.
No fish, no plants, no animals, no people,
No theme parks, no zoos, no video games.
And the air was no good for people to breathe.
The complicated molecules on the stardust
Fell on the land and into the ocean.
At the same time, other complicated molecules
Were being formed at the bottom of the ocean
By hot vents of water that bubbled up
From the magma under the surface of the earth.
And for a long time that’s all that happened.
Then, about three or four billion years ago,
Some of the stardust molecules
And hot water molecules
Thumped into each other:
But instead of bouncing away like bumpercars,
They stuck together
And connected to each other in a very special way
So that they could make more of themselves.
This was big and happy news!
Life had begun on earth!
But there was nobody here
To say “Awesome!” yet.
These very special molecules
Gathered little blobs around themselves called cells,
And they kept making more of themselves.
Then one kind of cell welcomed other kinds of cells into itself,
So it could make food
Out of sunshine, water, gases, and minerals.
These complicated cells formed into teams
And changed so that they could make more of themselves.
Some of them got more and more complicated,
And there were more and more kinds of them.
Some of them grew deep in the sea,
And some grew near the land.
Slowly-swimming little amoebas,
Rolled their blobby one-celled bodies
Around even tinier things, to eat them.
Algae, each one invisibly small, reproduced by the billions
To turn water green.
Tiny bacteria converted ocean water into oxygen
That went into the air: without it, we can't breathe.
Thank you, bacteria!
Some living things changed
So that they could copy themselves
By coming together and sharing parts of themselves
So that the new living thing would be a little different
Than the things that came together to make them.
This is how creatures became male and female,
So that each living thing could change a little bit
Every time it reproduced.
Some changes helped them survive better,
And some changes made it harder for them to live,
Depending on where they were.
Evolution,
The long process of change in living creatures,
Is the reason there are so many different kinds
Of living things.
Awesome!
Millions and millions of random changes
Make such complicated, beautiful creatures!
Each animal became something like a collection
Of little plants and animals inside a body,
With all the parts working together to help it live.
These animals could sense where light was coming from,
Where sound was coming from,
Not very well at first, but evolution’s changes
Collected special cells together to make eyes
And others to make ears
And others to make bigger and bigger brains
To notice and remember things.
Some plants, and later fish and other animals in the sea,
Evolved so they could live on the land.
The first land animals crawled on the beach
And later walked in the forests
And nibbled on the grass in the meadows.
All the plants and animals lived together,
And helped each other change.
The grass evolved so that animals could eat it
And then poop on the ground to feed the grass.
Bees depended on flowers for food,
And flowers depended on bees to carry pollen to each other
So that the flowers could make seeds.
Life became a circle of seeds,
Seeds dropping from plants
And animals eating some of the seeds
And others dropping on the ground
To grow into plants that made more seeds.
The seeds of animals were sperm cells and eggs
That came together when the animals had sex:
The sperm bumped into the egg and stuck to it
And went inside of it and changed it into a kind of seed
That grew inside the mother
Either as an egg that she laid in a nest or on the ground
Or in a watery place in the mother’s belly
Where the baby grew until it was born.
Some animals got bigger and bigger brains
And could do more and more complicated things
And remember more and more
As they changed through evolution.
Over billions of years the earth changed.
Volcanoes exploded and wiped out lots of life.
Some creatures survived,
Others did not.
Gigantic meteors struck the earth
And clouds of dust blocked the sun
And more creatures were wiped out.
But others survived,
And others changed,
So that they could survive.
Very slowly, one family of the hairy animals, the mammals,
Changed so that the parts of their brains used for thinking
Grew very big.
Their brains were so active and complicated
That minds and souls formed through them.
These mammals, special kinds of apes,
Slowly changed into human beings.
We became human when we looked at our world,
At the sky, at the stars and galaxies,
At the plants and animals,
And at each other,
And said “Awesome!”
We asked: “Where did we come from?”
“Where are we going?”
“What shall we do?”
“How can we love each other best?”
We made up words and stories
To understand what we saw
And what we felt.
We invented religions
Full of words and songs and art;
We made paintings on the walls of caves,
To say “Thank You” and “Please”
And “WOW!” to the universe.
Then we built beautiful cities,
And amazing machines.
We made terrible mistakes,
And we learned from them.
We studied the rules of nature:
And we learned that all the plants and animals
Are our cousins: we’re all related!
And we have to take care of each other.
We carefully watched how the universe works,
And when we discovered that it all
Grew from a tiny seed,
We said: “Awesome!”
There’s much more to learn!
What was inside the universe seed
That kicked and made it explode?
Will the universe stop expanding,
And then stop and fall
Back into another universe seed
That will spread out into a new
And very different universe?
We don’t know yet.
There’s so much more to discover!
This is how the universe
Finds and enjoys itself!
Bits of stardust from the seed
Came together to make
Eyes and ears and brains and minds.
From seeds and stardust
You and I were formed,
So we could learn where we came from,
And say:
“Awesome!”
((I wrote this "musing" after our granddaughter, Rumi (age 5), asked: "Grandpa, where did the first person come from?" I gave a brief answer, and upon hearing it, my wife, Roberta Maran, strongly urged me to write it down. This is a much longer version! Very special thanks to physicist Mandeep Gill, evolutionary biologist Cathy Russell , biological researcher Ruth Wood, and also to "musings" readers Tom Devine and Betsy Rosen for their corrections and comments, which I used in editing this piece.))