Excellence Reporter: Rev. Kowalski, what is the meaning of life?

Gary Kowalski: Whether you believe it or not, your life began 13.7 billions years ago when, inexplicably, things started.

From the beginning, your birth (and that of countless of others creatures) was written into the world-lines of a universe predisposed toward the unlikely possibility that something should exist (and not nothing), that life should evolve (out of seemingly indifferent atoms and chemicals), that consciousness and self-awareness would originate (out of apparently dumb minerals and vegetables), and that moral freedom and choice would arise, transcending the leap from what is to “what should be.”

Our task on Earth is to fully realize who we are: more than carbon-based egos struggling for survival and self-perpetuation on this cosmically insignificant bit of real estate.  

The great religions of the world as well as modern science agree. We are built of star stuff, microcosms of fantastic, creative and life-affirming energies that are both ultimately mysterious and oddly congruent with the human mind’s ability to formulate and understand.  

Care for creation is commitment to our larger, deeper self. Love of neighbor is preservation of the DNA we share in such commonality with other life forms. At some point in your spiritual development, you come to a realization that in response to the question “What’s it all about?”, the correct answer is, “it is not all about me!”  

Joy, gratitude and service are natural outgrowths of grokking our own identity: transient expressions of a beautiful, nurturing and playful process that is Infinite and Interdependent to its core.

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~Rev. Gary Kowalski is the author of bestselling books on nature, animals, science and spirituality. A graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Divinity School, he currently serves as a volunteer firefighter in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  
www.kowalskibooks.com

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