Just when I thought it was safe to assume I knew something about God and/or the universe, I catch a show on “Nat Geo Wild” about animals of the Galapagos.

I saw a mommy bird looking on, unemotionally, as one of her baby birds grabs the neck of another baby bird and then successfully drags it out of their nest to leave it to die, unprotected, on the rocks along the shore.

Murder, for this species, is the norm.

And just as I was trying to write that introductory sentence above, a friend of mine serendipitously texted me: “The world is made of love.”

I call bullsh*t.

F*cking, total, goddamn, bullsh*t.

The cold, cruel truth is this: the world is made of the brutal survival instinct.

And the strong survive. The end.

I know it goes against the gospel of new-age spirituality many of us cling to (and hope to be true), but maybe we must face these facts:

There was the Big Bang, the Earth formed and cooled, fish grew legs and walked out onto to dry land, monkey turned into man, wars were fought, The Beatles recorded “Sgt. Pepper’s,” and here we are today, at the pinnacle of evolution.

Covered skeletons of greed machines, pushing and dragging the weak from the nest.

Not for the sake of survival anymore mind you, we’ve basically evolved passed that one. But, we push the weak from the nests in order to acquire more. More, more, and more. At the sake and expense of others. That, my fine feathered friends, is the history of humanity.

In other words, we have devolved.

So, maybe Darwin was correct up until a point. In the beginning, it’s survival of the fittest. But just maybe, evolution wasn’t intended to stop there.

Many years ago, while contemplating similar issues, jotted down, “Maybe God evolves at the same rate as we do.”

Maybe it’s time now for love, as my friend said in his text, to be what the world is made of.

Maybe we will evolve to have bigger hearts.

I hope so.

For now, I’m just grateful that I’m on that path. How about you?