Pyrite has a lousy rap. Its natural hew is golden, but gold it is not. Instead, it contains only iron and brimstone. Many an enamored prospector has, indeed, felt cursed because of its jilting. But don’t you, prospective reader, be fooled. Pyrite is valuable.
The composition of pyrite is simple. It is a binary salt consisting of iron and sulfur (aka brimstone). Iron is the most stable nucleus known, yet it will rust through and through if left in the open. But iron is vital to life. It is the essential metal in life-giving blood. It binds oxygen from our lungs until needed by the body. Sulfur stinks. Our noses are especially tuned to any sulfur-containing compounds (think skunk). Yet it, too, is an essential component of life. Cells need it for proper function of proteins and even hair requires it. Either element, left in isolation, is prone to decay or putridity. But together they seem to have tamed each other for more important purposes.
In the body, when the two are together, wonderful processes occur. They are vital components of electron transport. You could think of them as a molecular Joseph, keeping electrons to disperse in times of want. Indeed, this synergistic property of the two is involved in harvesting light from the sun in photosynthesis, and in repairing the blueprint of life, DNA. When iron and sulfur are together they are truly a force.
So why do I write about pyrite in my family's blog? Well I probably won’t be much of a blogger. So it will be my lovely wife who will post the majority of them. Many of these posts will be nuggets to value for their appearance alone. Yet for the others, which don’t quite have that je ne sais quoi about them, look deeper. You’ll find components of our life: Synergy, the harvesting of abundance, the mending of the broken, and our very life-blood.
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