February 13, 2026
Culture
This world that breaks us open also fills us with awe.
This image is a detailed 3D rendering of a eukaryotic cell, titled "Cellular landscape cross-section through a eukaryotic cell." The visualization, created by artists Evan Ingersoll and Gael McGill, was built using datasets from various techniques, including X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and cryo-electron microscopy. The rendering is an attempt to visualize the complexity of cellular processes like signal transduction and protein synthesis. It is widely considered the most detailed model of a human cell produced to date.
To be alive on this planet is to feel the ache of a deep contradiction: the world that wounds us with injustice is the same world that moves us to awe with its beauty. One of the ways that astrologer Rob Brezsny manages this "impossibly wondrous enigma" is to conjure up names for it. "I stitch together poetic and wayward strings of words like prayer beads," he says, "fashioning phrases that acknowledge both the outlandish burden and the exquisite privilege of incarnation."
He’s right. There is a deep magic in naming. When Brezsny calls our world “The Breathing, Bleeding, Beautiful Mess” or “The Glorious Carnage of Conscious Aliveness,” he isn’t trying to solve it or hold it at arm’s length. As he puts it, he is “welcoming and exulting in the home we all share.”
"This is fierce consecration: treating our luminous agonies and delightful ordeals not as afflictions to transcend but as prodigious treasures to be squeezed for every drop of meaning, pleasure, connection, and reverent revelry they contain."
ARTICLE: In Praise of the Gorgeous Turmoil
