Once upon the vast and silent void of our cosmos, a lucky speck of interstellar dust was drawn quietly into the mysterious dance of gravity, time, and chemistry that creates the miracle of a planet.

This fortunate mote was born in the Virgo Supercluster, in what became the Orion Arm of our Milky Way Galaxy. Anonymous and alone, it evolved over endless light years into a blue sphere of vast seas and stunning geography, eventual home to billions of astonishing life forms.

In size, these organisms range from mycoplasma genitalium, a bacteria measuring 200 nanometers, to the blue whale, 98 feet long and 150 tons. For beauty, they are breathtaking…

But after four and a half billion years, the most phenomenal resident of this rarest of planets turned out to be a complex, biomechanical wonder of unimaginable creativity and sophistication: we, the people, with our magnificently diverse cultures and homelands. To the likely surprise of more entrenched neighbors, we suddenly became the dominant species on Earth, leading actors with ill anchored morality and 86 billion neurons driving us onward.

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Now, in the darkening dramas of this decade, we face the perilous contradictions of our existence — for there is no end to the magnificence and horror of the human drama. We rise to every challenge, sink to any depth. We bless nature’s miracles, yet destroy at will. Our righteousness lords over other life; yet we beseech gods for mercy. Our anger flares to violence; yet we demand justice. We covet ceaselessly, yet give generously. All the while, we accept this polarity as human nature and move on in our ‘glassy essence.’

Not least, so many suffer relentlessly, wondering each day at living another. So many are refugees from disaster or violence, escaping through unfamiliar horizons to avoid closer death, grasping what is left – a child, ragged clothes, a cup, a SIM card. So many are victims of injustice, of the vagaries of despotism or ill luck, unable to bring their wisps of hope to legal or social recourse.

Especially with the rapidly increasing vulnerability of life on Earth, how do we come to terms with this ‘marble and mud’ of our existence? How do we reclaim our humanity? Most urgently, how do we end war, solve climate change, save democracy?

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Within the stirrings of the last two decades, there seemed a new grace born upon this world, a clearer understanding that our living  —  this heavenly breath of existence  —  must embrace an inherent responsibility for each of us toward the lives of all sentient beings.

Yet it often seems a grace too far  —  still foundering on the tsunamic greed and myopia of the few, not yet wholeheartedly raising the hopes and prospects of the many.

As our destinies become more commanding and entwined, may each of us ask, in profound reverence for Earth’s transcendent web of life,

“How deeply do I care about our interdependent future?”

“How will I help rescue our humanity?”