Recalling Eden

Do you ever ponder Eden? What was it like, the perfection and the oneness? Because I am so in love with our earth, I take it a step further and wonder what it was like for the animals that existed there. Was there a food chain? I wonder what the rules where. Did Eden exist before Adam and Eve? And when they came to be, did the animals and plants take one look and say,"Well there goes the neighborhood?"

In my musing, I see the flora and fauna welcoming this new species, accepting them with open arms. But deeper still, could they communicate with each other? Clearly in the Bible, the snake had the ability to speak with Eve, so was it just the snake or in the perfection, did they all know one another? Of course none of us really knows.

But I like to think that there was that wholeness, the oneness...all things united in spirit and that the purpose of the world Adam and Even shared was have a blueprint for what life was to be like in the physical. The plants and animals all had purpose and there was meaning to they're existence other than just filler...or food.

The more I think about it, the more I believe the Creator did leave a deeper meaning about the way the world is meant to work in the purposes of those that share this planet with us. Nothing in this design was by accident or coincidence and that we, now, so blatantly ignore these purposes is one reason humanity finds itself in the shape we are in today.

Certainly there must be wisdom coded in the grand design. Certainly there must be value in understanding the seasons and why each animal acts the way it does or hunts the way it does. I tend to believe we're missing a huge piece of the puzzle by thinking our species is somehow better, more intelligent or intelligent enough to run things on earth. We haven't done the best job up to this point. In fact we are using resources faster than we allow them to replenish, killing off our brother and sister species left and right and polluting what's left. We're not so bad at killing each other off for our different beliefs and dogmas either.

I know that some religions and dogmas are loath to say that animals and plants are anything more than tools for us to use and that speaking to animals is somehow a blasphemy. Still there are others that revere animals. In my mind, we all came from the same source, no matter what you call the Creator, all made of the same one thing so isn't it more of a blasphemy to deny the sacredness of the natural world? And perhaps, just maybe, it would serve us better to think of ourselves not so much as stewards, but students of the nature we were gifted with. One could do a lot worse than comtemplate the loyalty of a dog or the work ethic of an ant. And imagine if we treated the waters as a sacred gift rather than a dumping site.

So what's it mean to be human? What's our calling as humanity? And in discovering that, would it mean we would finally be humane?