Breathtaking! Absolutely amazing precision within a process that took more than nine years resulted in sharp photos of Pluto! OMG… literally Oh, My God! How many billions of years old is the universe? Consider what we have just seen for the very first time! Consider for a moment more, human ingenuity achieved this incredible feat.

That sharp black and white photo of Pluto’s craggy surface — much more complex, variable and revealing than scientists had anticipated — has been fixed in my imagination. This Pluto voyage completes NASA’s decades-long mission to investigate all the planets of our solar system. For a generation old enough to remember President Kennedy’s outrageously bold aspiration of a moon landing, NASA’s achievement is nothing short of mind-boggling.

Another image is becoming fixed. Slowly, as the stunning achievement of planetary exploration settles into our consciousness, something else becomes obvious. Each and all of the planets in our solar system appear to be devoid of life as we know it. Even the Mars probe has yielded scant evidence of water on the Red Planet or other conditions necessary for life.

That awareness could make us feel terribly alone. Or, allowing this evidence to seep into our consciousness could be awe-inspiring! Rather than a testament to our insignificance it may awaken an awareness of our inalienable dignity and moral duty. Think about it… our home truly is what Thomas Berry aptly coined “the garden planet of the universe.” The authors of the Genesis creation accounts could not have been more accurate than to say we have been placed in a garden and it is ours to tend and till.

Sadly, there is mounting evidence that we are killing it. Somewhere along the line we got the impression that Earth exists for our “use.” Just like our original forebears we became drunk with the original sin that we are the masters of good and evil. That we are as good as God! We have bought “the lie” that the Earth exists as a reservoir of passive resources for our economic exploitation. Supply is infinite and parts are replaceable! Slipping from the perch of inspired scientific research we fall into believing all we discover exists primarily for our commercial exploitation feeding an insatiable consumption.

Coincidentally, a storm ripped through Minneapolis the same weekend the spacecraft began sending back photos of Pluto. The winds tore through three lead branches of our seven-year old Hackberry on the boulevard in front of our house. City crews have marked it for removal due to the damage. We are heart-broken — it was itself a replacement for a diseased tree and was only now taking on the promise of its mature potential.

Our shredded tree stands as a gash and scar in our front yard — sentinel of a changing climate. Nature’s desperate attempt to communicate that something is terribly wrong with this picture. Scientific evidence is incontrovertible except for those who choose to live in denial. We cannot sustain our obsession with removing Earth’s bounty naively counting on more… always more!

Like the Tree that stood in the center of Eden reminds us, we live in a paradise.  But we live within limits as the Genesis account attests.  We have also been set in relationship with all other creatures brought into being by the one Creator. We are not God. Given for us to tend and till, neither are we sole proprietors for whom this Earth was created.

All is not right in our garden. With such incredible scientific feats revealing the truths of our universe, will our generation be the one to finally learn from the torn and shredded tree — the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?