All religions have their stories. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus – they all have their stories. All political ideologies have their hallowed texts. I have my story. It is the story of life on this planet and of the evolutionary emergence of humankind and of the interactions between humans and the rest of the living world. I call this story the Bionarrative. It comes to us through the natural sciences. It is a great story.
The more I learn about the story of life, through personal observations and from science – the more I learn, the greater is my sense of wonder, and the more profound my sense of respect -indeed feeling of reverence – for Nature, and for the creative forces that gave rise to the living world – and to me.
I am thinking not only of the natural environment, with all its mindboggling diversity and beauty, but also of the amazing and extremely complicated processes that go on inside my own body and that have kept it going for over 94 years.
And the more I learn, the greater is my resolve, in the words of Claude Monet, ‘to mingle more closely with Nature’ and ‘to live and work in harmony with her laws’.[1]
It
is a good feeling.
A Biorenaissance 