The Dark Line

 On those parts of the world where cliffs expose the eras of the past, specifically the end of the Mesozoic (dinosaurs) and the start of the Cenozoic (rise of mammals) one can spot a dark line that separates those two eras. That line was created by the global fires resulting from that fateful asteroid impact 66 million years ago.

Correction: It wasn't fateful, fate wasn't involved (as far as we can tell). The only force guiding that asteroid was physics, orbital dynamics. If the path of that rock was any different, if its trajectory a year previously had differed in any direction by a fraction of an arc-second of a degree then this planet would still be dominated by nonavian dinosaurs. As far as we know, no one budged that asnteroid toward our spaceship Earth. Anyway....

Imagine the immense, endless tragedy and suffering that line marks. Imagine the brand new possibilities, the amazing new life that came about in those lines above that dark one. Then ponder the astounding... 'miracle' I almost want to say, of one species attaining the capacity to apprehend all this. I can easily picture myself standing in one spot for over an hour in tears, moved at the deepest level by what that dark line means.

An immense tragedy of a different kind is to have millions of people believe that this planet, this universe was created in days. To them, this dark line means nothing. All they can do, all they are capable of doing is looking at that line with all the others, say "That's pretty!" and move on.

If there is a god, some creator-deity or deities that did budge that rock to help make possible the human race, I believe they'd want us to be able to read those lines in the rock. And lines in the genetic codes of every animal plant and microorganism we can get our hands on because all of that dna shows us history as well as those rocks do.

And that knowledge changes us as much as that one line in the rock changed all life on Earth.