2.  A Meditation on The Bird's Nest Orchid.

                                                                                                            Photo: Paul Munton 
A Bird's Nest Orchid, Neottia nidus-avis,  growing in a very shaded wood 

Dearly Beloved

Recently there has been huge progress in the biological sciences. One of the consequent revelations concerns the evolution of cell organelles. There are chloroplasts – best known as the green bodies in plant cells which produce oxygen and starch, help generate nitrogen and use it produce most of  plants' amino acids. There are mitochondria found in animals, plants and fungi, which, amongst other things, produce a high energy molecule which when broken down helps power the organism. It is now believed that both these organelles were originally free living single celled organisms which were enveloped by another primitive single celled organism, a situation which both parties found helped them thrive. So chloroplasts are believed to have derived from a cyanobacteria which had previously developed the capacity to use sunlight to metabolize. Even today some 1,300 million years after the union, mitochondria have their own DNA to help them replicate and that replication is independent of the replication of the larger cell of which they are a part.

The enhanced capacities of these cells allowed them to join with others and become multicellular organisms which continued to evolve in ever greater complexity so that today at least one species, Homo sapiens, has the capacity to conceive of a diversity of ideas including chloroplasts and a loving God. Without the coming together of these organisms life which we know today would not exist. 

So it is with human endeavor. Where human beings co-operate they can do wonderful things as we have just seen in the rapid development of the three vaccines against Covid-19. Unfortunately human beings pick fights with one another more readily than they will cooperate. That conversation between Ruth and Naomi her mother in law, which has been mentioned at least twice in different Dearly Beloved letters from St Clements, is very unusual because it seals a relationship of mutual help and support, especially support of someone in need, as rare in life to day as it is in the Bible apart from passages setting out the loving purposes of Christ.

“And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest , I will lodge; thy people shall be my people and thy God my god; 17 Where thou diest, will I die and there will I be buried..." Ruth 1:16-17

That is also the promise that my wife to be gave me before our marriage.

Surely if those primitive unicellular organisms had had a conversation it would have been along similar lines. Perhaps it takes women to set an example in cooperation and compassion. That relationship between Naomi and Ruth led on to Ruth's marriage to Boaz and they had a grand child named Jesse and a great grandson who became King David – so it led to great things. The book of Ruth follows the final verses of Judges which describes the destruction of the tribe of Benjamin and the many “men of valour” who were killed in battle, so typical of our human history of mutual destruction.

Yet despite the wonderful capacity of chloroplasts, some species of plant have abandoned them. Such is the bird's nest orchid,  so called because of its circular tangle of roots which enclose a fungus which feeds the orchid. In its turn the fungus has a symbiotic relationship with a tree, extracting sugar from its roots but giving minerals to the tree. As it has no chloroplasts the orchid has no need of leaves but consequently suffers from a low capacity to generate energy so that it takes twelve years to develop sufficiently to produce its pallid flower. Given its strange life style it is unsurprising that the flower of this orchid is rare.

Apparently chloroplasts evolved separately on at least four occasions during evolutionary history. So Ecclesiastes, The Gatherer, was right when he wrote:

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. “

But there are, nevertheless some very amazing things under the Sun. And we humans would be even more amazing if we cooperated more, one with another, and fought each other a little less.

Peace,

Paul. 

Originally published 3 December 2020

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  Rosa Celeste :  Gustave Doré 's illustration for  Paradiso  Canto 31, where Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest Heaven, The Empyrean Introductory Notes for the Discussion Group for St Clement's at Andrew Day's residence on 23 rd February 2024 on the subject of AJ Ayer's statement that: “ If a mystic admits that the object of his vision is something which cannot be described, then he must also admit that he is bound to talk nonsense when he describes it. “ Contemplative Experience. I will use “contemplative” rather than “mystic” in honour of “Mystic Meg” a News of the World sub editor and later astrologer associated with predicting things about National Lottery winners (which I am told, were rarely accurate!) I am going to start with describing some tiny portions of the experiences of contemplatives and will then go on to deal with AJ Ayer's objections. I shall leave a few seconds before I identify each quotation to allow people to think a
Read more
Image
24. On War. Dearly Beloved, It is difficult for us to cope with a war in Europe so close to home, especially because it is a war within Christendom between Christian communities. Apart from the civil war in Herzegovina, there has been peace in Europe for 77 years. My father was 28 years old and my mother 22 when war broke out in 1939. My father was already in the Royal Navy and my mother joined the Auxillary Territoral Service. “The War” in my family continued in talk and discussion long after the fighting had actually stopped. It was the background to my childhood and was made more prominent when my mother organised her family to fly us out to Malta in 1953 where my father's ship lay in Sliema Creek. We lodged close by whilst he finished an extra year of service obligated by the Korean War. One my earliest memories is of looking down from a prop driven Vickers Viscount aircraft at the ships on the Mediterranean sea shining in the sun far below. That was the same Mediterrane
Read more
Image
  Nearly Beloved, 91 Questions About the Nature of Questions . Last night at St Clement's Church the choir sang a diversity of music including, Poulenc's Four Motets entitled Tenebrae factae sunt – which might be loosely translated as “ There was darkness ”. These are difficult, modern, meditative pieces but they were beautifully and movingly sung by St Clement's Choir conducted and trained by Karol Jaworski. The source of the Tenebrae is to be found in Mark 15:33 which describes Christ's crucifixion: “ And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour .” T his service, its hymns, motets and varied readings, raised the most demanding questions of Christian belief. Is any question more demanding of our understanding than that posed in the second of the motets, Christ's cry from the cross: “My God, why hast though forsaken me?' Altogether the varied texts on the service sheet contained twelve qu
Read more