In Defense of Nature

PART EIGHT 

Epilogue: Why You Should Believe This Treatise

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © 2024 Marlene A. Condon

If nonnative plants, such as this Black Knapweed, fare better in your yard than native plants, allow them to grow! A healthy alien plant that provides food is far more valuable to wildlife than an ailing native plant struggling to survive, or worse yet, barren ground.

From time immemorial, man has felt that there was more to life than his physical manifestation upon the Earth. Throughout the ages and in every culture, man has expressed a belief in his own immortality.

Is this preoccupation with life after physical death just the result of man’s hope to avoid the finality that appears to be the fate of all living things? Or could it be our intuition that we really do possess an indestructible soul that lives on once we depart our bodies, and we inherently sense this truth?

As stated at the beginning of this treatise, I have never concerned myself with religion or even pondered much whether we would somehow live on following death. Yet when my mother died in my home in 1993 as I held her hand, I experienced what I truly felt to be a departure of her “soul”.

Several minutes before she stopped breathing, her eyes opened briefly, and then reclosed. I immediately sensed that only her body remained and that she herself (the essence of what comprised who she was) had just left. I cannot explain why exactly I felt as I did, other than to say that—for some reason—my mother just did not seem to be “in there” anymore. Her body seemed lifeless, even though it was still breathing air in and out.

 

Having never before watched someone die, and never having given much thought to the actual process of dying and what it might mean for one’s soul, I certainly cannot offer any explanation for why I should have felt what I did. However, about two weeks prior to my mom’s death, something else had occurred which, in retrospect, lends credence to the idea that a person has a soul that would indeed leave the body to go elsewhere.

 

My mother had cancer and I was her sole caregiver during the final year of her life. About two weeks before she passed (how appropriate a word for what I experienced), I walked into the room where she had been bedridden for many months and noticed a strange look on her face. She was staring off into the corner of the room in front of her.

 

I asked what she was looking at, and she told me her family was telling her it was time to “come home”. Ever the scientist, I wanted more details so I could understand what was happening. Although she herself was still “all there” mentally, I could not help but wonder if this was simply an hallucination as the cancer infiltrated her brain.

 

So, I inquired who was there in front of her. The answer astounded me. She saw her long-dead father and mother, as well as her brother who had died as a child from scarlet fever, a leading cause of death among children in the early 20th century. She did not see her still-living brother; she saw only the members of her immediate family who had all died a long time ago.

 

If, indeed, we are more than just the sum of physical parts that make up our being, and we each possess a soul (or some sort of spiritual aspect to who we are) that really is immortal, my mother’s experience makes perfect sense. How incredibly loving is the thought that the members of her family, who had already moved on, would come to her as her physical body was giving out so she would not fear going “home”.

 

Throughout my life, my mother had made clear that death was not something she wanted discussed in her presence. For as long as I can remember, she had been terrified of death, the result, I believe, of losing her brother when she herself was a mere child.

 

In fact, the association of flowers with funerals so impacted her that she absolutely hated flowers inside the house. One day my father brought home a lovely white Easter lily, and she screamed at him to get rid of it—a scene I’ll never forget because her angst so clashed with the serene beauty of the blossom.

 

Yet, less than two weeks after my mother saw her long-departed family, she met her end without the least bit of fear—a truly miraculous feat, considering that throughout her illness, her impending death was not something I could discuss with her. Her last words to me were in a tone of total acceptance as she stated very matter-of-factly that she was “going now”.

 

I then asked if she wanted me to get a priest, as we had been Catholic and she had gone to church up until she was too ill to attend anymore. She chuckled—in a derisive manner, no question about it and much to my surprise—before answering no. She seemed confident that no religious “fuss” was necessary. And that is just as I would expect it should be.

 

The Dalai Lama XIV is quoted as saying, “This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness.”

[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/34322-this-is-my-simple-religion-no-need-for-temples-no]

 

Religions function as a way for man to feel connected to God in communion with other folks, but perhaps a better way to find God is via the appreciation of nature, the holy gift that not only makes our physical lives possible, but also attests to God’s existence. It took almost two decades after my mother’s dying days for me to experience my nature revelation, but when I did, it was astonishing to see how well it meshed with my mother’s end-of-life experiences.

 

Still, you may be skeptical of the nature revelation that God exists. However, you should not be skeptical of the information about the natural world contained in this book, which is real and vitally important to the future of mankind.

 

Each person must recognize how much his own life is contingent upon the proper functioning of the environment that depends completely upon the existence of wildlife. Only then will people understand the absolute necessity of altering their lifestyles as necessary to live simply (with as small an impact upon the Earth as possible) so that we allow plenty of room for wildlife to continue to coexist with us.

 

Individuals must also speak out and set examples by their own behaviors (such as landscaping in a more natural manner) to those who are afraid or unwilling to make the changes necessary to sustain life on Earth in these modern times.

 

My hope is that you will see this treatise as a beacon, a guiding light to salvation for all life on Earth. I also hope that you will take to heart the words of thirteen-year-old Anne Frank (the young Jewish girl who wrote a diary during the two years she and her family were hiding from Nazis): “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” Indeed. Let us all get started immediately.

A small artificial pond in the author’s front yard provides a “home” for amphibians (such as frogs) and many kinds of aquatic insects, as well as drinking and bathing water for all kinds of wildlife.

TOMORROW, PART NINE:

Final Thoughts: Overpopulation of Man a Damning Problem for Eden

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