Conservation of Mass

Lavoissier pointed out, with the help of his wife Marie-Anne Pierette Paulze,

that if there existed a giant glass dome, big enough to cover all of Paris,

while the French Revolution burned through all of the homes and possessions

of the aristocracy-- and if the debris collected inside that great glass dome

could be converted back to its original sate-- the resulting mass would

exactly equal its pre-Revolution existence.

This is worth our consideration as we see the earth around us today:

wildfires burning through entire towns, villages and states,

animal populations dwindling and expiring completely, and

the quality of the air too thick with ash to even measure. I wonder

whether we could all gather some ash now, from the streets outside.

In 20 years, could our children combine our ash gatherings to create

something new, using their own hopefulness, inspiration and faith

to knit a sparkling world free of the troubles we've cultivated over the

past hundreds of decades?