A LEGEND from the Orokolo people of the Gulf province tells of how a giant turtle lived in a vast ocean long before there was any land or animals and plants. One day, tired of swimming the turtle decided to use its powerful flippers to dig up the sea bed and file up the soil in one place until an island was created. From the eggs it laid all creatures including humans and plants emerged on the island.
The island, the legend goes, was glowing when it was first raised from the waves because it contained life. And as the legend goes, the island started growing bigger and bigger and as it increased its size it added the plants and animals on it. That is one version of creation.
Another legend from Southern China suggests that in the beginning was Chaos shaped as an egg. It became a human form which eyes were the sun and the moon. From its body grew the earth and all plants and animals.
Greek mythology has a similar story line of how Gaea (earth) and Chronos (heavens) were a couple and they gave birth to other Gods and from these Gods all the earth.
The most popular creation story is in the first book of the Christian Bible which itself talks about chaos and the face of God moving over the deep and He separated the land and water and light and darkness before creating all the animals and plants on it.
I have often wondered about how we tend to concentrate too much on how life got here that we forget the earth itself which in all legends is formed first. Without earth, therefore, there can be no life.
The life-like attributes these legends give mother earth itself has fascinated me always and today with climate change posing the greatest threat to all life, I have been wondering whether or not mother earth is itself not alive; that all life – animals and plants, living and dead, are so much body parts – hair, tissues, organs, systems and even parasites on a living earth.
This is not original thought, of course. There have been academic discourses and there is a body of thought out there that believes it.
This line of thinking (that earth is alive) is encouraged by the advent of incurable diseases such as the AIDS virus, the avian flue and the rapid development of other more dangerous and drug resistant strains of containable diseases, the increase in earth tremors, global warming, and related disasters. Human behaviour and its warrior tendencies down through the centuries which continues unabated when he alone possesses the power to think and reason and therefore ought to have used these faculties to contain his aggressive behaviour, also supports the hand of something else in our affairs.
An earth that was irritated by the blemishes on its body or which might feel threats to its life by the parasites on it would do what humans do when they get lice in their hair – shave the hair off or get lice treatment. The earth could be one massive living organism or a complex system that might have ability to react to stimuli.
All life forms take their very essence from the earth. The amino acids, protein molecules, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen content, the electricity, the water and all the
other component parts of a complex living creature is found first in and on the earth. Life starts from the earth, is sustained and contained on earth and departs into the earth. Without earth there can be no life.
Another life-like attribute of the earth is that without all known modes of locomotion, it moves. Without wing or engine, flipper or paddle, hands or legs it has been a space traveller long before anything else moved on earth, hurtling through space at the stunning speed of some 66,000 miles an hour.
The speed is necessary for the seasons it creates on its surface, keeping various parts of its body cool, other parts of it warm and regenerating other parts as it goes. At the same time it travels, it revolves on its axis at more than a thousand miles an hour, creating day and night as a result. Both conditions create release of creative energies through work as well as rest, recuperation.
It has systems that keep essential elements working – the rain cycle – for instance could be body temperature. Why can the earth not therefore be alive itself? I sometimes wonder how plants grow in fire ravaged zones so quickly.
The intensity of the bush fires that often wipe out thousands of hectares of bush land send heat waves hundreds of miles in all directions, including underground. It scorches seeds that might be buried underground for many meters, I should think. Yet, after the fires go out and the first rains touch the soil every part of the scorched land is filled with greenery. Could the seeds have come with the rain? Could the wind meticulously sow all the seeds in every nook and cranny and of such variety? The rebirth of a jungle, even if not in its origin form and variety, is nothing short of miraculous.
Like the human body restores burns on a body back to an operative stage by the mechanism of the body. Might not the earth by doing that?
When lice or some other unwelcome parasite make its home on our human bodies we are not usually aware of them until they make their presence felt through multiplication and activity that irritates us. Then we respond violently to get rid of them because their existence are a threat to our comfort and health.
Might not mother earth have found the human animal to have become such pests that not only are they a threat to themselves but to the very existence of earth? Were this possible, would not a living earth respond to the threat accordingly?
Would it not send earth quakes and create tidal waves or heat waves and would it not create a multitude of bacterium and viruses that would eradicate the threat?
Food for thought as you begin this heat filled week.