It has always been hard to describe the beginning. Perhaps there was just a ripple. Not in any particular thing; just in what is. Perhaps it was no big deal but there was No moment, then there was. And quite a moment it was.

It was really a delicious little moment by all accounts. It did not stay little for any length of time. It quickly expanded into a fairly substantial bit of real estate then it spawned off a whole lot of tiny, squiggly things, which flew around for awhile and then snuggled up with a few friends forming tiny neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods soon linked up with others nearby and soon whole chains of neighbourhoods were busy interacting with other chains of neighbourhoods and so the matter of matter began. All of it starting with this very singular of events. It was something that started from simple beginnings but developed into a fairly complicated situation by the end of it all.

All in all, after a fair bit of time, about 13.7 billion years, give or take a million or two, the whole situation had settled into a pretty good rhythm. One species had achieved a fair bit of dominance over all the others and thought pretty highly of itself. In one of the last bits of old jungle left which was located on the west side of Africa, about 200 hundred kilometres inland from where the bulgy part of the head meets the thinner face part of the continent, an interesting debate began between the species living there.

Somehow a dispute had arisen over who was the head of the whole life-thing. This was a rather odd dispute because it was generally accepted that the lion was king of the beasts, and as such should really be the king of the whole kit and caboodle. However, there were dissenters. Deep psychological analysis in later years performed by wizened old men in ivory towers, led to the conclusion that the matter really had to do with identity. The “Who am I question?” reformulated as “What is my place in the whole show” and presented as “What am I worth?” and “Who is the judge of this?”.

These are the universal questions of life that everyone has to answer before you get out of bed in the morning. If you answer them badly, your day is usually terrible, if you answer them vaguely, then your day is rather miserable. There is a constant push to get affirmation and it sets off a day generally full of rejection (imagined, implied, or real), and recriminations plus a fair modicum of gripes, complaints, and frequent sucking up to authority figures. All in all, the sort of day you really would like to bequeath to the half-a-dozen narcissists you know. Of course, narcissists are precisely the people who answer these questions badly in the first place and this sets them off on totally unsatisfactory day of establishing their self-worth by loud proclamation to all and sundry. All and sundry, of course, are usually not much moved by loud proclamations and so the narcissists are forced into making more frequent and even louder proclamations, which are usually even less well received by all and sundry. So the narcissists go home bereft of satisfying warm fuzzies from their fellows, wrapped only in the cold covering of their own cries of self-worth.

Most species are not richly endowed with narcissists (maybe 4-5%), which brings us back to the King of the Beasts. He is a bit of a preener, lying in the shade of the acacia tree, waiting for his women to invite him over to the meal they have just caught. His day is full of sleeping, stretching, yawning, punctuated by an occasional roar to remind everyone he is still there and still the king. But, as I mentioned, there were dissenters.

Most of the trouble was fomented by a chimpanzee. He was a bit of an outsider as a child. When he grew into an adult, he became a gadfly in chimp society. Always asking odd questions. As the years went by these questions started seeping into chimp society and then began spilling over into other species in the community. This led to the growing disquiet in the Jungle, which finally spilled over into the debate in question. It was felt that someone must have the answer to these questions. Surely, the king’s answer will be the correct one. So, who is the king? The chimpanzee volunteered that perhaps the king to ask is the king of the top species. Living in a survival community, this seemed to be a very reasonable position to take. Little did they know that the chimp was up to his usual mischief and that this suggestion was going to change their whole world.

However, it seemed innocent enough, so they set to with the type of enthusiasm, only available to hunter-gatherer communities, who know that the feast at the end of the successful hunt it worth all the risks and dangers of the hunt. In the tops of the trees, around waterholes, on the open grasslands at the edge of the jungle, they discussed it.

In the beginning every species had a belief that they really were the important species. After all everyone knew most about their own lives. They knew about their values, which were good, life-positive, and promotive of their wellbeing and that of their community. It was this latter clause that caused all the trouble. At first they did not see that it was a problem. It was the chimp who messed the nice picture up. He went from place to place all over the jungle just asking one question – “Why is the community relevant to your importance?”

“What a silly question” said the monkeys, which was quite something coming from the silliest creatures in the jungle. “Isn’t it obvious”, said the vultures, which raised many eyebrows, as even a vulture mealtime raises serious doubts about any sense of stable community in vulture society. “Umm” said the impala, who thought that the question needed no explanation, but were struggling a bit with the idea of being separate creatures from the herd. The ants and the bees were silent. They did not understand the question. They were the community. The trees knew the answer; they were singular and multiple. They sighed their support for the chimp. They knew what he was doing, to what he was guiding the species. They did what they could to make his travel as easy as possible from one side of the jungle to the other.

As the creatures thought about this, two shifts occurred in their thinking. The first was the realization that their community, their species, is really what gave them meaning, provided them with pleasure, challenge, food, security, affirmation, and that beyond the community there really did not seem to be any understandable value system of merit. Every different understanding of God that different species worshipped, honoured, or rebelled against, presented an ethical system that was rooted in love of others, doing good to others, and taking care of others. As singular creatures individuated out from the group, their responsibilities to the group became less an innate drive, but more powerful as an ethical principle. It was as if life knew that promoting individuation risked existential death if community contact was completely severed, but knew that it was worthwhile for the greatest happiness that can be experienced comes from reconnecting, with one’s full independent consciousness, to the community and losing one’s self in contemplating, caring, or loving others. The community exists as the one significant other who is next to you who needs your loving and responds best to that among all the things you are able to share. The challenge as an individuated entity is to recognize that the sharing means knowing how to give in a way that is understandable to the other, not just in way understandable to you. The only way to do this is to become aware of the internal state of the other. To feel as the other feels, to know the other’s mind, moods, needs.

This first shift caused real problems. The lion started thinking about the lioness’s life. He started to occasionally let his lionesses have the first bites of the kill. He thought they had worked harder for it than he had. They were, at first, seriously nonplussed by this change in traditional behaviour and thought that perhaps he was losing his potency and needed replacing. Certain subsequent behaviours, which shall not be mentioned at this time, quickly disabused them of those notions, so they felt very affirmed by his largesse and went ahead and took the first bites. However, they began to wonder why he was doing this. They began to think about his needs, about the difficulties of his life, what he did for them. They began to think that really he should have the first bite. This led to a number of rather unfortunately acrimonious altercations over who was going to let the other eat first. Finally they worked it out and so at times the one went first, at times the other and at other times they started together. All through the species in the jungle there were ripples of change in behaviour. New patterns were worked out. New joys and new challenges emerged. The societies began to change.

The second shift should have been foreseen from the first one. Perhaps those wizened old psychologists did see it coming, but it was probably too late to prevent the destruction of life.

It was at one of the big debates at the Giant Oak Waterhole, which was the largest waterhole in the whole jungle, that the matter came to a head. The lion was arguing that that lions were the top species because he was the King of the Beasts. He could kill any other animal. He was the most powerful. Lions held the preeminent position in the killing hierarchy. Every other meat-providing species feared the lion. They were the best species. The dissenters pointed out that all species killed, being a bigger killer was not such a great deal. It was just a matter of size. By body weight hunting dogs killed more than lions, so did jungle rats and bats. And bats killed while flying at great speed and performing amazing feats of location and flying dexterity; the lion merely hunted in a pack, isolated a prey and tore it down by mass of numbers. So by amounts killed and skill, lions are pretty low on the hierarchy. This rather mollified the lion, but he could see their points. Various other species made their claims, but none gained much acceptance, until the chimpanzee asked about the primary producers, the trees and the grasses.

All species eventually came to accept this proposition, that the trees and grasses were the top species. A few species posited homo sapiens citing the amazing things they had seen the jungle tribes do. However, this did not last long. It was apparent that they were a very misguided type of species and clearly did more harm that good in their own group and to the jungle that surrounded them, let alone the suspicious relationship they had to the roaring metal monsters that were busy destroying the jungle on its periphery. It seemed obvious that they had a cheek calling themselves “sapiens” or “the wise”. They had a lot to learn about life that was common knowledge amongst the other jungle denizens. No, the plants won hands down.

They won because all the other species realized that they were our transformers. They changed the star energy into something we can use on the earth. That energy was the only energy that living processes could use (the news of deep sea vent life had not reached this far into the jungle as yet). The plants gave life to all the other living entities on the planet. They did this selflessly, without moaning or groaning, day and night (although much less at night), in good weather and foul. They wrapped this energy up in their bodies and then offered them to all the species of the earth. All other species eventually accepted this conclusion. These were the primary species and they revealed a startling truth. All life is connected. The powerhouse of energy production took the energy of the sun added it to nitrogen and other elements derived mostly from the soil and formed sugars and starches. These were then given to animals who converted them into proteins and fats. The animals died, and some acknowledgement was given to the lions for this to assuage the pain from having lost their elevated position as top species, and so their flesh was returned to the soil, where the microbes broke it down and freed up the nitrogen for the plants to use. So the cycle was complete. The plants were our connection to the stars. They are the only entrance to our energy-needy, earth life-systems. So, the plants revealed that our true community lies beyond our own species.

The first shift revealed how to behave towards our community and the reason for doing this. The second shift revealed who constitutes our community.

So all species began to live more and more selfless lives. Even humans were finally dragged into this vision of things and this way of living together on the earth. Within a very short time, astronomically speaking, that is in only a few million years, all species connected to each other and become one. The universe transformed and in blink disappeared back into what is, leaving barely a ripple.

It has always been hard to describe the beginning. Perhaps there was just a ripple. Not in any particular thing; just in what is. Perhaps it was no big deal but there was no moment, then there was. And quite a moment it was.

It was rather a delicious little moment by all accounts and it did not stay little for any length of time. But this creation was different. It did not begin as a singularity. It began as a complexity. It was conscious from the start. It knew right from wrong and it had the knowledge of life and death. Its challenges were of a different nature. But that is another story. Amen.