Nature is cruel, and there's no getting around it.

We all love to think of waterfalls and mountains and all those vistas served up just for our enjoyment, right? Not to mention little kittens and meerkats, perched upright, looking around, almost human, or our loyal dogs, lapping up whatever affection we give them.

Nature sweet and accommodating, in our control and serving us, bringing us joy.

But that's not what nature is, and we all know it. Dogs do bite children, sometimes horribly, and even our pet cats can scratch us. And then there's the hiker who steps off the path and plunges to his death, the swimmer in beautiful waters who drowns, the skier who triggers an avalanche that kills not just him or her but friends, too.

Nature doesn't care about you or me. Nature is what is. It's what existed before we ever appeared on the scene. It's rocks and rivers and mountains and valleys. It's a Kansas tornado or a flood in some Asian country where too many people live right down by the sea because it's the only way they can make a living. It's the pet who kills and eats a bird that was just a morning before singing in a tree out front.

Nature couldn't care less about you or me. It does what it's programmed to do. We aren't even a blip on its screen.

Our job is to respect nature and live by her rules. And what are those rules?

I think we're still trying to figure that out. Assume that nature is, as I said, what is, so let's go with that. Don't assume that you're going to get some special allowance just because you've taken a course in alpine ecology or that you're a certified ski instructor. At any moment, nature may un-leash a whole world of trouble on you. And you're no match for it.

Don't think that your sweet kitty isn't going to show up on your doorstep with a mouse in its mouth.

So let's take it in that direction: nature as sustenance. It's how we survive, right? We eat not just the crops of the earth but other creatures.

I don't know about you -- and I'm a lover of steaks (especially rib-eyes) -- but I find all that a little creepy. Why do we have to kill other animals to eat? Who thought that up?

Back up a few millennia -- maybe more than a few -- way back to when the laws of the universe were being written. If you'd been in charge, would you have said that every species would have to terrorize and then kill and eat another species?

The basic problem is that this is the way nature works: someone is always killing and eating someone. Usually nature is just indifferent; it kills us when we're in the wrong place at the wrong time. But this particular set-up -- pitting up against each other, to the death -- seems actually kind of cruel. Is this really the best way to keep our species alive? And it's not just us humans, who love our steaks. It goes all the way down to the tiniest organisms: someone is always eating someone, and that means that someone is always being eaten.

Yuck!

[NOTE: I'm well aware that a good many humans -- and many species of animals -- eat only vegetables or grass or whatever, but I'll bet there are more who eat other living things.]

I'm not a religious person, though I think of myself as spiritual/mystical: something strange is going on, but I don't know what it is (and neither do you). But I think there are systems at work in the universe, pre-ordained --by what hand we can't begin to know -- and I question this one on moral grounds.

The stars and planets and nebulae exist and function according to the laws of physics -- so far as we understand them -- but something is seriously wrong down here in the world of biology, what we know as life. We've got a lot of needless suffering going on down here, lots more pain and suffering than is necessary. And I'm not talking about man-made suffering -- crime and wars and abuse, etc. I'm talking about this inherent need to kill and eat each other. Something is just wrong about that, don't you think?

Why can't all animals feed on plants, which we assume have no souls and don't suffer when devoured? Why all this barbarity? All this pain and suffering just so we can have meat for dinner? Is this desire for the flesh of another animal built into us as humans, and are the vegetatians among us just exceptions? I don't know. Do you?

What would Jesus think about this? So far as I know, he never spoke about it. Why not?

Here's a letter I would write to Him:

Dear Jesus, please tell your Dad that we have a problem down here. We're trying not to keep killing each other, at least some of us. But we still have this problem about food. Those cows and pigs and chickens, cooked in a crockpot or over a long-roast barbeque pit, swathed with the right sauces or rubs, still excite our taste buds. What's that all about? How are we supposed to respect the rights of other species when some of them, to put it bluntly, taste so good?

Can we get an update on this? Some clarification? Hello? Anybody listening Up There?

In the meantime, I think my steak is sizzling, and it does smell good.