Amazing things happen in this world all the time.
The planet is scattered with amazing people. So many had gone before us and left the world to us in its current form. Some have left it a much better place. And others have not.
But. Here is a smattering of those events, randomly selected, of the incredible world in which we live.
Today is the anniversary of Lascaux Painting Day. At least three times, I have written the story of the kids, in 1940, following their dog into the cave in France and finding the paintings on the wall. I won’t do it again today. But those 17,000-year-old cave drawings always give me the quivers. I try to imagine the people of that time. Drawing on the walls. And all the big, big trouble they were in when their Mom found them. She said, “Kids, I’ll never get those marks off the wall.” And of course, she was right.
In a different part of the world. In 1900, a sealed cave (Mogao Caves) was discovered in China. Now, that cave contained 1,100 scrolls and 15,000 Buddhist texts. It was sealed early in the 11th century. The earliest dated printed book, a copy of the Diamond Sutra printed in 868, was found there too.
You may be wondering what the Diamond Sutra is. Well, it is long for one thing, and has been translated by many. But, most agree about its core meaning. “The Diamond Sutra posits that something is what it is only because of what it is not. The text challenges the common belief that inside each and every one of us is an immovable core, or soul—in favor of a more fluid and relational view of existence.” (Stanford University)
I guess we shall see. Along those same lines, but in a much different way, is the next item.
During WWII, an American POW in Osaka narrowly avoided execution by speaking these words at the time of his fate: “He can kill me, but he will not kill my spirit, and my spirit will lodge inside him and haunt him for the rest of his life.” The Japanese officer decided to back off and decided to let the prisoner live.
Now, if you ask me, that prisoner didn’t know if that was true or not. But he must have been terribly convincing. At any rate, he lived to tell the story. Or. So it goes.
Our immortal selves. Which follows with the next interesting fact, a little nearer our time.
The DNA sequence of Stephen Hawking is stored on a hard disk, called the “Immortality Drive.” This is kept onboard the International Space Station. He is among a select group of humans to have their DNA immortalized. I am not sure who picked the group of people, but among them, are talk show host Stephen Colbert, Playboy model Jo Garcia, game designer Richard Garriott, fantasy authors Tracy Hickman and Laura Hickman, pro wrestler Matt Morgan, and athlete Lance Armstrong. Quite a collection of DNA, it would seem.
Before you are too soaked into the higher philosophical implications of this or too captivated by the possibility of the immortal soul, let me offer you another fact to remind you about humans and their shortcomings.
Freddie Mercury, the lead singer for Queen, once threw a party where he had dwarves walk around with plates full of cocaine strapped to the tops of their heads as an offering to his guests.
And there you have it.
Amazing us, in our amazing world.
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“We are what we believe we are!”
― C.S. Lewis
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“It’s amazing what you can see when you just sit quietly and look.”
― Jacqueline Kelly
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“Aren’t most wonderful things a little bit strange?”
― Katie Henry, Heretics Anonymous
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The events which shape the amazing. Or not, we see.
