"Creatures Of The Earth"

"Recovery is like balancing grains of sand..." "Then I looked back and saw only one set of footprints..." "The child was throwing starfish back into the ocean..." "Sand, sand, everywhere and not a drop to drink..." Okay, I made that last one up.

There's lots of metaphors out there about sand, the beach, the ocean. I'm a California native and it's hilarious to me how people who don't live here think all us Californians live at the beach. We don't, of course. My homeland has the beaches, but also deserts, mountains, forests, lakes, rivers, foothills and valleys. I have been to the beach, though, many times. Days spent on the beach as a child, my feet in the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean, were some of my earliest experiences in communion with God.

I can feel God in places other than the ocean. Standing in a clearing in the forest, late at night with thousands of stars overhead; or on top of a mountain, looking out across hundreds of miles. I've taken long hikes through old-growth forests on the northern California coast and been amazed at the sheer bounty of life. I've stood the base of giant redwood and sequoia trees, wider around than I am tall, and been struck dumbfounded by the thought that they have been alive for thousands of years.

There are a number of Native American sayings that express the idea that the earth doesn't belong to us humans, we belong to the earth. Whenever I have immersed myself in nature, I have felt the overwhelming truth of that. As we humans become more and more urbanized, live more and more in sterilized environments of our own making, is it any surprise that we forget our place in the natural order? I've known people that the only wildlife they've ever seen is an opossum running across the driveway or a raccoon rummaging through garbage.

In Recovery, we learn that we are not the center of the universe, just one of an infinite number of pieces that make up the whole. Being connected to nature can help us to remember that, too. There's a kind of peace and power that comes from it, a connectedness that happens when we take the time to be away from all our electronic things. We get away from the television, leave behind the phones and the music players, and exist as just ourselves.

I've heard people say they don't like doing that, being without all their creature comforts. It makes them feel nervous, strange. Perhaps it's because we've become dependent on technology to tell us who we are? But we aren't our computers, our cars, our email, or voice messages. Or maybe we're so disconnected from the natural state of our being that we don't know how to behave as just ourselves without all the attachments.

Personally, I think it's important to spend a little time, here and there, letting go of civilization and connecting with nature. It helps us to remember who and what we really are--creatures of the Earth.