Natural Selection Poem by Paul du Plessis

A divine presence settles on us
Above worm and bird, wombat and beetle
In the world of transmutation
Closely observed by explorer Darwin,
But still not the fittest, nor the most likely
Among the elect - just an ordinary me
Knowing the Spirit that gives true identity
Allowing humble origins blend into equality,
Making imperfect sense of reformer Calvin
On the journey of transformation
As we prepare for a future without the Beagle
That proceeds somewhere beyond Galapagos.
So while evolving species flourish in phylogeny
Creation is crowned with human sovereignty.

(January 200)

After visiting the Darwin Big Idea Big Exhibition at the Natural History Museum, London, and thinking of Calvin’s theology of unconditional election and predestination in his ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion’ alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution outlined in ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’