Ghosts in the Oil

Since the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, there have been some good documentaries on the formation of the coal and oil that fuel our modern lifestyle. It is a facsinating story that takes us back to the first flowering of ecosystems in the shallow water and on the land. All these new plants pulling so much carbon out of the atmosphere that the higher oxygen concentration allowed huge creatures to multiply. I knew that fossils had been found in coal, but I had no idea where oil came from. Now I know, but do I know too much? In my car, I think of the lives of the sea plants and creatured distilled into my tank. At home, I envision the ancient trees and plants whose bodies burn to create the electricity running my lights and air conditioner. Each of us has two lineages, the physical and the spiritual. I cannot prove the geneaology of the soul, but it uplifts me to think of it as a part of the Divine Reality, born and re-born through unending generations on this planet, and others. But that is not doctrine, just my fancy. Our other lineage is that of our physical bodies, going back through our known ancestors to unknown to, if evolution is to be accepted, the very origins of life on earth. Our distant ancestors wandered among those trees, and swam in those oceans, the very ones that now provide our coal and oil. Did they have dreams, other than food, rest, and survival? And are their untethered ghosts, if not bound in spiritual lineages to us, now flooding painfully back into our consciousness?