This is what we should expect in a world whose beginnings were moral insurrection. The earth groans. Earth’s machinations have been rewired to be against us, instead of for us. The ground pushes back. And the sky, the sea, the animals, each other, and even our own bodies.

A few days ago I was taking a refreshing fall jaunt in Grand Teton National Park, when I ran into some folks from Houston. I asked them how they were recovering after the Harvey deluge. One of them proceeded to philosophize boldly about the meaning of it all.

“Ok, so look at all this stuff happening. Houston has experienced three big floods in the past few years, including Harvey. Now Hurricane Irma. Plus all of these fires and things. You cannot tell me that something is not going on here, with all of these disasters. Something is happening.”

There is no doubt that recent times have seen a number of disasters. Just over a week ago, the world witnessed a semi-rare three hurricanes simultaneously in the Atlantic basin. Houston has experienced three “500 year flood events” in the past few years. Having dropped about 52 inches of rain locally and nine trillion tons of water, Harvey is considered a “1000 year or more” event. Irma is still deluging the States after devastating entire islands. While Americans were thus occupied, monsoon-related flooding in Asia exceeded the deaths, damaged, and displaced of the States. Water wasn’t the only carnaging culprit. Wildfires in Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Idaho, California, and Utah brought unexpected havoc to the west. We could go on about earthquakes, wars, rumors of wars, and other mayhem.

But that hiking Houstonian philosopher was right: things are happening.

But the question is, what?

Many have postulated. And it’s probably best to conclude that theologian Al Gore is not inerrantly inspired. So is it the end times? Just about every generation makes that conclusion. And here we are.

But the thing that’s happening is this: we are no longer in the Garden of Eden. The threatless cool of the day is no longer everywhere, every day. You have to go to places like Key West to find it. But even that’s a risk.

In reality, there’s really not much going on. It’s nothing out of the ordinary.

This is not to say that eye-brow raising hardships are not happening. Nor is this in any way to minimize the tragedy of human suffering.

But this is all quite normal. Disasters and storms are the norm. And as difficult and damaging as recent hydro-cataclysms have been this year, Earth has seen worse. In 1975, Typhoon Nina killed about 229,000. In 1991, a cyclone in Bangladesh claimed 138,000. In 2008 Cyclone Nargis took over 138,000 lives. The infamous 2004 Boxing Day quake caused flooding which took about 250,000 lives. The 1970 Bhola Cyclone claimed 500,000. And, some millennia ago, that unequalled geological-meteorological event took the life of all humanity, save eight.

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