And we have to think of bacteria when we think of our community,
that these are the great forces.
These are the most essential things.
These are the beings that we must be grateful for.
The bacteria that make the system workable.
And we're beginning to understand this, that we must include the insects,
that there is a very mysterious bond.
And we have to very, very careful
about where we bestow the honors, and what we are appreciative of.
We have to be appreciative of everything.
It's one of the characteristics Loren Eiseley, who I think is,
perhaps I would nominate him for the finest
essayist in the English language in the 20th century.
But particularly in his books, The Unexpected Universe and
The Night Country and a number of others, but
his essays have a depth and a profundity and
an insight Into this particular problem that is unique.
And particularly, there's a dark side in his personality,
I think, that enables him to probe deeply into the whole structure and
functioning of the universe, particularly in this tragic dimension.
So, to understand the Christ tragedy, the universe tragedy,
insofar as the universe has a Christ dimension.
The tragedies of the universe already have a Christ dimension.
We have Saint Paul, who is not content
with the Christ of the Gospels.
He insisted on the cosmological dimension of Christ,
particularly in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians,
where he mentions in Christ all things hold together.
Well, this idea of the human as being
the best way of talking about, as being the best metaphor for
understanding the universe, peoples have heard that.
It's been the Hindu habit, the Buddhist habit,
the Chinese habit in a wonderful way.
We, Saint.
Paul brings it into a Christian modality.
That this, and it has a special reference, I think,
and it is very obviously adaptable, too.
In Christ, all things hold together.
There's no difficulty in the Christian seeing that an emergent
universe has a Christ dimension from the beginning.
In fact, in contemporary physics, there's the cosmological
anthropic principle, where the physicist
themselves see the human dimension of the universe from the beginning.