I've never been a big fan of Tony Snow. First as a Fox broadcaster and then as spokesman for a president who has failed ot inspire in me any sense of pride, loyalty or support, Snow has been a veritable symbol of all in politics that I have found distasteful. I could not believe that he could bring himself to believe all of the apparent lies he told in his White House role.

Still, I have a bedrock belief that there are no evil people and that most people believe that what they are doing is right. They don't set out to become bad people and they don't have a belief that they are bad.

Today, my good friend and minister, Vicky Elder, sent me this essay Snow wrote for Christianity Today.After reading it, I sent this note to Rev. Vicky:

That was moving and intriguing. Thanks for sharing.

It made me more aware than I have been that when you flake off the paint of politics and rub away the patina of religious dogma, we are all, at core, lovely and eternal creations of a living God. That realization, in turn, brought into stark relief the Truth that every one of us wants the same ultimate consummation of life: a death with dignity in the certainty of eternity. While we may disagree on the best way to get there -- as we disagree on the "how" of so much in our daily lives -- there truly is only one of us here when it comes to the things that matter.

I am a tiny bit better person today for having read and reflected on that essay.

One of the problems with all of the world histories I know about is that they are human-centric to the near exclusion of all other species, forms of life, or planetary eras. While archaeology and  anthropology texts frequently delve with what they term "pre-history," it is difficult if not impossible to find a definitive story of how the cosmos and this particular universe within that cosmos came to be. In other words, it is hard to find a way to put the eye-blink history of a single species of being, of which we happen ot be members, into the broad context of not just the planet but the entire cosmos of which we are a part. And not only a part, but in many ways a consequence or result of cosmic forces.

The price we pay for such ignorance is that we make choices without the benefit of a big-picture view of their impact on our co-inhabitants of the grand cosmos. Such ignorance of our history can only, in the long run, have deleterious consequences.

The Universe Story by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry represents the best effort I've seen to help us to spin a new story about ourselves, where we came from, our place in the grand scheme of things, where we're headed. Subtitled "From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era," this book is almost poetic in its description of the birth of the cosmos, the emergence of our own universe and its if not unique then at least highly unusual formulation, and the development of our physical surroundings. Swimme and his mentor have created a fluid, readable, exciting take on the new story humanity needs to escape from the dark ignorance and deliberate blind spots of past efforts.