The lions and other animals were friendly in that first ideal garden of Eve and Adam. This was the picture I had from my really young days: a mirage that was wonderful for a young imagination. And while that ideal has slowly grown more complex through awareness of evolution’s details, my understanding also became progressively clear that we indeed once were closer to being a part with everything in the garden.
Our small human numbers were not a sustainability challenge then, for earth’s restorative potential was far more than adequate to cover our human activities. Thus was our relationship with creation for approximately 95 percent of human existence, when we lived as one species among many, depending on intimate relations with our ecosystems.
Today we no longer choose to remember or acknowledge that earlier phase of eco-equality. Our human estrangement from earth and creation has complex social and religious roots... But my journey back toward the garden has begun.