This Magic Sea

This image of the Full Earth was taken half way to the moon by the Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, and Ron Evans. Three men were in the spacecraft and only one man used the camera for this image. But the photo was, in a larger sense, taken, printed and distributed by the collective scientific and technical effort of millions of human beings. In one way or another, in the interconnections of nature, wealth, politics, and knowledge, every person and every creature of Earth participated in capturing the image. It is a self-portrait of a living planet. This is an image of a human egg. It is a tiny sphere, only 0.1-mm in diameter. Loosed from its walls in the ovary, the egg floats in a fluid almost identical to sea water. The two spheres have many similarities. 1. Both are small on their own scales, and yet filled with awesome potential. 2. Both spheres are alive. 3. Both are involved with the process of becoming.