Imagine the world before we knew it; before “beaches… hardened into stone”[1] cold buildings and “long street[s]”[2], back to Genesis where “God created the heavens and the earth.”[3] 
[4] Now picture our world today, and ask yourself what has taken place? 
[5] The answer is evolution, and as Kat said, “One of the most apparent divisions is that between creationism and evolution.” Therefore I do not accept Tennyson’s idea for a solution, for I want to build a bridge between creationism and evolution, connecting the different views. I have found that sometimes the best answer is not to side with one or the other, but with the continuities of the both sides.
Tennyson wanted to “contemplate all this work of Time,”[6] as Darwin contemplated “how infinitely complex and close fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other.”[7] Though their explanations differed, I got a feeling from both that Nature allowed us to evolve where we are today. Darwin believed natural selection was the driving force for evolution. He said, “Nature… cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they are useful to any being.” [8] In a similar way, Tennyson imagined Nature exclaiming, “‘A thousand types are gone;/ I care for nothing, all shall go.’”[9] Although Tennyson thought man was Nature’s “last work”[10] and Darwin believed it was the greatest work so far, both saw that it was Nature who decided what would happen.
Once we realize that we are not in control, we can see that “All we are is dust in the wind/ Everything is dust in the wind.”[11] 
[12] I believe we get too ahead of ourselves, and we think we are in control, but we need to be reminded that although we influence nature, we cannot control it. NATURE IS IN CONTROL. We are just one part, one aspect of the story. Tennyson wrote, “O earth, what changes hast thou seen!” This helps me to realize that although we can use science to guess what happened before and predict what may happen, we do not know. It is not a bad thing that we do not know. If we knew the answers to questions like this, there would be no place for faith. The faith that God created nature, and God is nature: he evolved us from dirt, and our bodies shall once again become dirt.
So to me, there is no need to separate evolution from creationism. Where Darwin and Tennyson’s ideas began and ended differ but what is important is what connected them: Nature. As both Darwin and Tennyson realized, earth has changed, and will always be changing; it might mean we evolve to a new and more efficient being, or it could mean we have reached the end and our skeletons will form with the earth to continue the story. “Nature [is] like an open book;”[13] telling the unimaginable story the Creator has made about the created.
[14]
[1] Loren Eisley, “The Firmament of Time,” in Leadership and U.T., ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s Copy & Binding, 2008), 1059.
[2] Alfred Tennyson, “In Memoriam,” in Leadership and U.T., ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s Copy & Binding, 2008), 1087.
[3] Genesis 1:1 (The Jerusalem Bible) in Leadership and U.T., ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s Copy & Binding, 2008), 1060.
[4]http://www.slona.net/resources/images/content/special/radio/water_world.marked.png
[5] http://www.isrealli.org/wp-content/uploads/davos.jpg
[6] Tennyson, 1088.
[7] Charles Darwin, “The Origin of Species,” in Leadership and U.T., ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s Copy & Binding, 2008), 1064.
[8] Darwin, 1066.
[9] Tennyson, 1085.
[10] Tennyson, 1086.
[11] Tennyson, 1086.
[12] http://abcotv.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/tornado1.jpg
[13] Tennyson, 1090.
[14] http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/IMC/2054~On-the-Way-Open-Book-Posters.jpg
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