All good things must come to an end and so it is with the Natural Processes thread.
I appreciate those who participated. This thread would not have been possible without all my fine Christian friends.
I appreciate the effort and thought that CF and DS put into their messages.
We all know that there is a policy against religious and political discussions. Thanks to the Moderator for his indulgence.
The following is a personal vision. I rejoice each day that I had the fortune to be here on this exquisite planet. I think every day about the life that has ascended over the nearly billion years since the first primordial life forms evolved. A miracle. I would rather be here in the flesh than in a mythical spiritual afterlife.
Out on the plains of Africa a band of Hominids move through the shadows of dusk.
The small group of men, women and children have hunted and gathered all day to feed their tired bodies and care for their offspring.
In the darkness, they find a shelter and one of the elder men who carries the live ember from the fire of the night before wrapped carefully to sustain it, starts a fire.
The light and warmth of the fire is a pleasure beyond imagination to this small group of upright primates.
The fire provides the first relief to those haunted by the dead member of the group who was bitten that day by a deadly serpent.
His body has been carried all day by two of the younger males.
After a small hand full of berries and roots, the spiritual leader of the group has the body moved to the fire.
Each member of the group has seen birth and death.
Birth comes in pain, death in sorrow.
Each member thinks of where the life of the one struck down has gone.
No other animal but the Hominid has ever had the anatomical development to contemplate his own existence.
The power to think about what they are and why they are here.
In the short period of geologic time that these men have been here, they have acquired a language to communicate.
The elder goes to the body and intones it to the stars and the deep empty space of the sky.
He conducts the first ceremonial burial.
He gathers a hand full of the good earth.
He casts it toward the stars and speaks the fallen hunters name, Inyati.
Inyati's spirit is released, it goes with the small cloud of dust into the sky
Inyati's spirit see's his dear Star again. His sweet Margo.
He sees the green pastures of the African plains.
