Human’s Place in the Natural Word by Harry Carr

HUMANS' PLACE IN THE NATURAL WORLD
By Harry Carr

What is the appropriate nature of our role here on earth? There is much we can do
and some things we cannot without disrupting the natural order.
What is truly sacred? What are the laws of nature that we are bound to?
Nature for me is a place where soul restoration emerges. One of my favorite
passages as a child was the 23 Psalm.

“ The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures: and leads me beside the still waters.
He restores my soul… "

Obviously, this has special meaning for me, as I am a shepherd myself! I find the
green pastures restorative and lately we have had lots of still water ponding up in
the fields. The grass seems to handle it quite well, all in all, but sheep and goats do
not exactly like to get their feet wet. Cows and pigs on the other hand seem
unflustered by it.

Soul restoration is necessary if we are to bring about the restoration of the natural
world. Humans are most dangerous to our environment when our souls are
fragmented. Our souls are vessels intended to capture the beauty and beneficence of the spiritual world around us and integrate that spirit as a fundamental part of our
being. Yet, we are stressed by all that we have built, fragmented by our devices, and edifices, which we have determined to be essential to modern life. We all need to take inventory of our lives and find a way to restore our souls.

We often fall into the trap of the illusion of control. Nature is fundamentally wild.
Wildness is an asset, not a liability. When we kill the wild, we slaughter the spirit.
Then that newly created structure reflects our disengagement from the natural
world, beauty is then lost, and we become depressed. Our need to control
everything is coming from a position of weakness, not strength. Strength is
confidence in knowing that we can handle what nature throws at us.