Natural World vs Spiritual World: Can they ever meet?

For years I was immersed in the beauty of nature.  I was literally spellbound by the changing colors of the leaves in the fall.  A single cloud in a deep blue sky left me unable to function in the world, and sent me to my hammock to lose myself in the cloud's quiet meandering across the sky.  I learned to paint watercolors so that I could immerse myself in memorizing every detail of every flower in my profuse gardens.  How gentle is a flower? How sweet is the rain?  With what kisses does the wind grace the cheek?  How soul satisfying is the day spent with the sun's warmth drenching our skin?

With all that beauty, I am left cold by animal's nature.  I can see that animals must survive and are willing to kill each other to be able to eat another day.  But I just do not understand why the hawk must snatch a baby bird from its nest and rip it apart in front of its tiny screeching sparrow parents.  I am not a friend of hawks. One year, I rehabilitated a storm tossed monarch butterfly.  I watched it grow in strength each day in its determination to make its migratory journey to Mexico. The day it was ready to fly, strong enough to be freed, I took it to the beach to watch its joyous splendor as it finally made its way to the sky. He circled my head once, then twice, then rose into the sky to begin his flight, when a hawk swooped in front of my face and ate him in one gulp.  I do not like hawks.  And there are people like that, too.  There are those who make their millions on the backs of the poor, or who are destroying the integrity of our seeds and foods so that they may profit, knowing full well they may be causing our fellow man, and ultimately even themselves, to become diseased.

I have to look at these two different aspects of nature and wonder, where does compassion meet nature? Does it ever? Is compassion a higher calling, one that we can only embrace when we rise above the animal in us all?

I look at the crumbled wings of this new butterfly before me now, the second one to stop at Rose's Rest Home for the Storm Tossed Monarchs, and I wonder how to reconcile the fact that left to the devices of the universe, this little guy would most likely be dead.  Should I have left him in the parking lot as I found him, struggling to get lift off of more than a few inches?  Should I have hoped a car would have come along and put him out of his misery?  I wonder what he feels now, as he sits in my window, sunning his damaged wings.  He knows he cannot fly, and I doubt he will ever make the long trip to Mexico.  He is just too damaged.  Is it better to keep him with me, with daily outings allowing him to drink the nectar from the flowers he cannot reach on his own?  Or do I free him now, and let him die trying?  I cannot bear the thought.

As people, what is expected of us, and why?  There was a time in our history when we lived as the animals did and it was equally beautiful and harsh. We knew our way in the world, we understood what we needed to do to survive.  At best, we prayed gratefully before we devoured our kills.  At worst, we waged war for power.  But as the world evolves, whenever people evolve spiritually, they see that war is unnecessary, that we do not really need to kill to survive anymore. Eating nuts and berries sustained us.  Eating meat is as barbaric to me as cannibalism.

We are entering a time of grace.  The more I seek it, the more I see it, and the more I see a need for it.