The Zuni Indians of the American Southwest have a particularly compelling explanation for how Earth came to be.  Their story is called OUT OF THE CAVES OF THE WORLD, and the explanation therein seems much more prescient than those of some other cultures, including present-day biblical literalists.
I'll tell you the Reader's Digest version:
In the far off beginning there was no Earth or sky.  Only a watery waste, with the Sun Father above.  There were no animals and no humans.  For ages uncounted the Sun-Father shone on this watery waste until, because of the warmth of his great light, a green scum began to grow on top of the great waters.  Slowly the scum spread. It grew until at last it became the Four-Fold-Containing-Earth-Mother.

She was called the Four-Fold-Containing-Earth-Mother because there were four folds, or levels, within Earth Mother.  Three of these were dark caves under the earth, the fourth was the land we know today.  The deepest level was a dark, damp cave called the Cave of the Sooty Depth.  Here were the seeds of creatures which would later become humans.  In the darkness and dampness of this cave the seeds grew and expanded until they finally burst their husks, even as hatching birds burst their eggshells.  Again The Sun-Father high above the waters, sent forth his life-giving light.  This time he shown upon foam that was floating upon the water, 'til by the power of his light two gods arose from the foam who were called the Beloved Twain.  From the deepest cave of all, the Cave of the Sooty Depth, the Beloved Twain led the human creatures up into the next cave of the earth.  Here the human creatures grew and multiplied.  Some of them learned to walk on their hind feet.  Slowly the human creatures were becoming more human-like. 

When the second cave became overcrowded by human creatures, the Beloved Twain led some of them up, and left some of them behind, never to change and grow.  The human creatures were told "you are about to go up into another cave world.  There some of you are to become red and some white.  Others will become tawny, and others yellow."   In the third level they grew, and changed and multiplied, until this cave too was overflowing.

Then once more the Beloved Twain led upward those who would follow.  Again, some remained behind, and because they did, they have not changed through all the ages.  The human creatures who were led to the fourth level were told "you are about to change.  You will no longer crouch; you will stand proudly upright; you will lose your tails and there will be no scales or heavy hair on your bodies.  I will lead you to a place called the Middle Land were you will grow in power, in courage, in beauty and in wisdom.

…So on and on the Beloved Twain led these first humans.  At last they reached the Middle Land.  What is more, they became men and women, strong and straight and true.  There in the Middle Land they built their houses, and there they still live. Above them the Sun-Father still shines with the power of his light.[ii]

While it is easy to understand that Earth, including life on Earth, did not arise supernaturally in a brief, orchestrated act of God as described in the biblical story in the book of Genesis, or from a golden egg laid by the giant bird Nyx, or even from the Beloved Twain of the Zunis, arising from the foam of the Cave of the Sooty Depth,  I also sense that we still have a long way to go in our journey of understanding of the true facts of the origin and nature of existence - a journey that may never end.

But as I have learned of, and observed evidence of the evolutionary explanations of the origins of life on Earth, and as I have learned about astronomical observations of cosmological processes, I have become convinced that all life-forms on Earth (which now includes us, and about 6.6 billion others of the human species, and around 54 hundred other species of mammals, and at the very least, over 4 million other species of plant and animal life), all life-forms on Earth arise from the unique circumstances of this particular planet, in this particular solar system, in this particular galaxy, in this miniscule corner of a universe which, according to some string theorists and quantum mechanics, may itself be one of many universes, all of which together comprise all of existence.

So I believe that like a snowflake in a blizzard, life on Earth has a unique form,  arising from the form of Earth, and that form, from the unique cosmic circumstances in which Earth came into existence.

In her book THE SACRED DEPTHS OF NATURE,  Ursula Goodenough described the astounding uniqueness of our existence in this way:
"I walk through the Missouri Woods and the organisms are everywhere, seen and unseen, flying about or pushing through the soil or rummaging under the leaves, adapting and reproducing.   I open my senses to them and we connect.  I no longer need to anthropomorphize them, to value them because they are beautiful, or amusing, or important for my survival.  I see them as they are;  I understand how they work.   I think about their genes switching on and off, their cells dividing and differentiating in pace with my own, homologous to my own.  I take in the sycamore by the river, and I think about its story; the ancient algae and mosses and ferns that came before; the first tiny progenitor that gave rise to it, and to me.   I try to guess why it looks the way it does  -  why the leaves are so serrated and the bark so white  -  and I imagine all sorts of answers, all manner of selections and unintended consequences that have yielded this tree to existence  and hence to my experience." [iii]

So let us strive to understand the interrelationship between the unique circumstances of Earth, and the life forms of Earth,  When we think of Earth, let us strive to understand that Earth is a holistic organism involving not one, but three essential spheres:

the geosphere -- the oldest sphere, which includes the boiling core of molten minerals, the viscous mantel of rock, the floating crust,  the biosphere, holding organic life, non-living organic matter, and life-giving water, and the enfolding, protective blanket of gasses of the atmosphere,  and when we think of Earth, let us include also in that conception, all living things, which have arisen alongside of us.

Yet a growing scientific understanding of our place in all existence cannot fully account for my overpowering sense of interconnectedness, and interdependence.  It was the powerful resonance I sensed when I first encountered our seven principles, and our Seventh Principle in particular, that brought me to this church, and to this rostrum.  It is the sense that there is a spiritual realm, of which I am a part, and to which I am intimately connected, that keeps me searching.
In his essay: THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE EARTH, Father Thomas Berry, the visionary, Passionist Catholic eco-theologian, who has just passed away on June 1st of this year, wrote:
"We need a spirituality that emerges out of a reality deeper than ourselves, even deeper than life, a spirituality that is as deep as the Earth process itself, a spirituality born out of the solar system, and even out of the heavens beyond the solar system.  There in the stars is where the primordial elements take shape in both their physical and psychic aspects.  Out of these elements the solar system and Earth took shape, and out of Earth, ourselves"….  "Recovery of the capacity for subjective communion with the Earth is a consequence and a cause of a newly emerging spirituality. Subjective communion with the Earth, identification with the cosmic-Earth-human process, provides the context in which we now make our spiritual journey. This Journey is no longer the journey of Dante through the heavenly spheres. It is no longer simply the journey of the Christian community through history to the heavenly Jerusalem. It is the journey of primordial matter through its marvelous sequence of transformations -- in the stars, in the Earth, in living beings, in human consciousness -- toward an ever more complete spiritual-physical intercommunion of the parts with each other, with the whole, and with that numinous presence that has been manifested throughout this entire cosmic-Earth-human process." [iv]