Spiritual Lessons from Biology

There was a time when i could not sleep.  Each night when my head hit the pillow, a heatstorm of fearful thoughts began billowing up in my psyche.  i would worry about the following day, and i would regret the previous one.  i'd analyze, reanalyze, and re-reanalyze until i felt sick.  And over all of these thoughts hung a burning orb of anxiety. I recently read a beautiful bit of literature out of South Africa.  In low latitude deserts, daily air temperature may reach 50ºC (122ºF), with surface temperatures reaching 70ºC (158ºF)!  A normal mammalian response to such heats would be sweating, panting, or licking its body.  These responses are called “evaporative cooling”, but such responses are impossible for desert mammals because they would dry up like a furry raisin in a matter of hours!  So how do they dump heat without dumping water?  The Oryx of Saudi Arabia has an answer. Temperatures above 43ºC cause brain damage.  Yet the O...

i recently went to Oregon where i spoke at Portland State University on the topic of God and Science.  one morning i woke up early and decided to check out the ocean.  i left the beach-house and followed my nose towards the brine.  When i arrived at the beach, i couldn’t help but gasp.  The entire shore was covered in indigo.  i crept closer and closer, wondering at the strange phenomenon.  After stooping down to inspect the blue colours i came to realize the sand was painted in billions of tiny jellyfish.  i’d never seen anything like it in my life.  It was beautiful, but the weight of death saddened me. Further down the beach i found a twisted piece of driftwood, covered in mussels.  The mussels reached out their feathery hands to taste the morning breeze.  But each time they did, seagulls swooped down and ripped them from their shells.  i wished i could save them, but the thought seemed childish as soon as it passed through m...