As a science writer, miracles are not expected be within my field of interest.   I’m not a believer in any religion–nor do I believe in the supernatural. I don’t need to believe in the supernatural because nature is already super. I learned this from growing my own organic food. The green chlorophyll in plants is–even as you read these words–performing a miracle of biology, physics and chemistry that enables them to process and package sunlight into food for you and me. In fact, you and I eat the sun every time we bite into a bit of food.

I knew nothing of this when I started gardening in 1973. The only thing I knew was that my TV had died, and this opened up a cathedral of silence inside me. For the first time in my life, I could hear my inner voice without any background static. “Dig in the dirt! Make friends with the green guys!”.  It sang to me like a choir.

As you may have imagined, “the green guys” are the chlorophyll cells that for three billion years now have been empowering the plants on this planet (including the algae in the ocean) to make life out of light. Without the green guys, none of us would be here. Their creative productivity is so miraculous that it’s evaded the grasp of our scientists for as long as we’ve had scientists. But this much we do know:

Plants reach down with their roots and pull up water and tiny amounts of minerals from the soil (or the ocean). They also reach up toward our local star and capture its energy in their chlorophyll cells. By combining this solar energy with what they bring up from below and with the carbon dioxide they snatch out of thin air, they manufacture their own bodies. Of course, their bodies become our food directly through vegetables, fruits, and starches, and indirectly, by feeding any animals we eat. Thanks to the green guys, the light of the sun becomes the life of the earth.

A miracle that’s been happening all over our planet for three billion years now is easy to take for granted. But I prefer not to do that because I enjoy worshipping at the shrine of photosynthesis. As you may know, photosynthesis is the scientific term for the miracle that the green guys perform. “Photo” means light and “synthesis” means manufacturing. The green guys operate factories that run on light–on the renewable resource provided for free by the radiance of the star we’re orbiting.

No religious authority is commanding me to worship at the shrine of photosynthesis. I worship there because I love being down on my knees, participating in the miracle of soil and sky. If I didn’t do this, I’d feel like a mere spectator at my own life. In fact, the more I revere the green guys’ creative productivity, the better my food tastes. Thanks to my reverence, every morsel I eat is a divine communion with the blue-green planet that I live on and with the golden star that she’s orbiting.

When I’m saying grace before my meal I’m not pleading to have my food blessed. I’m honoring the fact that is already is!

Harriet–Maui, Hawaii

Robert and I have been friends for a few years and he knows my eccentricities–including a weekly ritual of sleeping in my hammock at the edge of the ocean under the stars.  When I am in my hammock, I am a kid again.  I love being held in the arms of the two trees that are holding up my hammock. I love being rocked from side to side by the wind. I slip into sleep to the shushing sounds of pebbles washing onto the beach and then back into the water.

Between periods of sleep, I pretend I am up in space, gazing down on our little planet. I notice that one side of our planet is lit by the sun, while her opposite side casts a shadow that’s shaped like a cone. (This makes our planet look like a ball of ice cream in a cone of darkness.) When I’m Earth-gazing like this, I can almost hear the folks on Earth’s sunny side saying, “it’s daytime”, while the folks on her shadowed side are saying, “it’s night time”.

When I awake at dawn my face is stretched wide by an enormous grin. As the sun’s rays begin warming my cheeks, I feel grateful that I understand what is happening:  My spinning planet is transporting me out of her shadow and into our sun’s light.

This morning I woke up at home in bed. Then I fed my cat, picked a papaya for breakfast, worked on my book manuscript and received a phone call from Robert. “It’s nearly time for our radio interview,” he prompted me. While he was explaining the radio station’s recording procedures, I was wondering for the umpteenth time if I’m actually qualified to talk about spiritual pilgrimage. Then Robert spontaneously mentioned that had bought a hammock. I got so excited by this news that my mouth opened and words tumbled out: “Sleeping under the stars is a pilgrimage through our planet’s shadow.”

Whether I’m spinning through our planet’s shadow or whether I’m spinning through our sun’s light, I’m always living on a blue-green planet that’s orbiting a golden star called the sun. The more times I orbit, the more grateful I am to astronomy for teaching me what our spiritual teachers have always said:  Life is a cosmic journey.

Harriet–Maui, Hawaii