If the Earth Were Small
If the Earth were only a
few feet in diameter, floating a
few feet above a field somewhere, people
would come from everywhere to marvel at it. People
would walk around it, marvelling at its big pools of water,
its little pools, and the water flowing between the pools. Peo-
ple would marvel at the bumps on it, and the holes in it, and the dif-
ferent areas on it. And they would marvel at the very thin layer of gas
surrounding it and at the water suspended in the gas. People would mar-
vel at all the creatures walking around the surface of the ball, and at the
creatures in the water, and at the green vegetation growing on the surface.
The people would declare it as sacred, because it was the only one, and
they would protect it so that it would not be hurt. The ball would be
the greatest wonder known, and people would come to pray to it, to
be healed, to gain its knowledge, to know its great beauty, and to
defend it with their lives because they would somehow know
that their lives, their own roundness, could be nothing
without it. If the Earth were only a few feet
in diameter. (Olaf Skarsholt, New
Zealand, 1990)
