There are eagles who fly far above their fellow avian pedestrians pecking at the ground below. Their wings surf the leading edge of energy waves emanating from the core of contemporary human collective consciousness; they explore nuances of wave and curl and break, and carve information-rich patterns in the skies for those with eyes which see such things: the poignant intersection of mortality and entropy; the orchestral complexity of consciousness, coalescing out of chaos into an instrument capable of profound dissonance and complex harmony; the piston of the heart, pumping life from its ancient origin ever onward, slowly extinguishing the vessels of its passage, heedless of any notion of holiness or worth.

I cannot tell you how to gain those heights. It is a visceral, elemental, mystical connection. Perhaps – if you observe, and think, and learn, and grow – perhaps you may one day find yourself there, mutually exploring with like minds and hearts the headwind pressures of our human passage, to divine the meaning which paradoxically emanates from the soulless engine of evolutionary biology.

I was born at the end of an age when the ancient paradigms of war and peace and conquest and security had proven to be filled with naiveté, a time when humanity began to collectively ask questions and seek answers to their arrival at the failure of old ways and means, motivated by the impending doom augured in the obliterations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When he witnessed the first detonation of a nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945, a piece of Hindu scripture ran through the mind of Robert Oppenheimer: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” It proved to be both a precise appraisal of the moment and a prescient vision of humanity’s inherent fatal flaw and, now, seemingly ordained future. Today the planetary bomb humanity has built and set to ticking is governed by a decaying switch, and soon that switch will not be an option.

When I came of age it was in an era riding the steep elevator of the industrial revolution, which had produced enough leisure time to support an unprecedented population of poets, philosophers, thinkers and theorists, and provide them with time to consider and reflect upon our existential condition and create a fuller appraisal, a deeper understanding, and a broader perspective of the human condition. It was a vibrant and revolutionary era which took new measure of the old ideas regarding life and death, good and evil, truth and lies, reality and illusion, and derived and set in motion new options for thinking and acting and being.

Fifty years ago the soaring eagles of humanity found themselves tumbling in waves far removed from the time when our collective consciousness was essentially a linear spear and they were a vanguard existing on its leading edge. Suddenly the tip of the spear had exploded in a spherical ball of nuclear energy which produced a chaotic array of vectors emanating in multiple directions from its core; an unprecedented amplification of energy struck the human continuum and while the ground shook the eagles began to recover and soar again into expanded dimensions. I am still there with them, how and why I know not. Yet somehow I sense them, seek them and find them, and in their presence I find recognition, validation, and contentment in who I am.

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And now, at the end of this short, curious and rambling reminiscence there comes certain clarity like a burst of light out of a dead star. There may come a time when eagles are only eagles, and no longer metaphors. Yet I have lived in a time when they were both.

There are eagles here, where I live. In the spring I see them in solitary flight, riding thermal swells ever upward. In the early summer I se them in numbers ranging wide across the skies, raging in territorial combat. In the early autumn I see mated pairs swoop low and arc between the trees of the wood and then rise up together into open sky in the pure shared joy of flight itself. They mate for life, you know.

Eagles don’t have to believe in God. They know they are God. They know this because when they find their mate, they love their mate – with all their heart and mind and soul and strength. When that happens, the very first commandment of all is realized, and God is revealed.