Miracles appear to be required only when you try to take too large a step all at once. This is not to say that life is not an impressive phenomenon. But as is typical with impressive phenomena, it is impressive because it emerges gradually somewhere on a long continuum.

One reason that we find the emergence of life surprising is that we don't really see much of it. . . We are like Horton the elephant, too large to hear the Whos.

Life  doesn't  happen  suddenly.  It fades  in.

The meaning of life is more than a definition of life.

We are always seeking it, never finding it.

Our once simple, unified meaning of life is being shattered into many, sometimes competing, concepts.

When you gaze out on a quiet, peaceful meadow, next to a still pond, under a motionless blue sky, you wonder how the noisy, busy cacophony of life could have arisen from such silent, motionless beginning.