4 - A Hymn to Life in the Universe Cosmic Search Vol. In the heart of the desert, where sand and rock and bare dirt might seem to be all that Earth can aspire to become, there yet stands a small tower of life. Its firm stalk rises out of the broken ground, supporting a structure of living cells whose intricate order contrasts sharply with the crudeness of the desert around it. Strange things are happening here, things the desert could never understand. The leaves receive the same light that bakes the scattered stones, but instead of throwing its heat away each night the plant keeps the sun for itself.
Rain pounds the indifferent dirt and seeps away, but roots grasp for all the water they can hold.
Though the plant might not seem to belong here, the desert was yet the womb from which it was born. Life was as much an expression of the desert as was sand or stone. If life defies chaos, it is yet created from it. This is the paradox of all life, not only in the desert, but in the whole universe as well, for what was the universe but a wilderness whose forces surged back and forth with a massive crudeness, tossing stars around as if they were grains of sand upon the wind, recklessly grinding out planets, and everywhere pouring energy into a void that will only swallow it forever. Yet from out of this barbaric prodigality arise worlds on which infinitely delicate forms will grow.