what if...

I am reading a book called Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, and found this quote:

"The attitude of the Navaho is that 'on the road of life to his final destiny, which will make man one with the universe, he is concerned with maintaining harmony with all things, with subsistence and the orderly replenishment of his own kind.'"

And it made me think of this: what if the earth received us, and treated us in death, the way we received it and treated it in life?

Would we find this notion chilling, humbling, comforting?

At the end of our lives, would earth imagine itself our steward, our protector, caring for the re-absorption of our bodies as a tender act of love? Or would she see us as commodities to be ripped apart and dispersed according to her most indulgent whims?

Mostly, I wonder, how would we act differently in the here-and-now if we knew that the earth had discretion in how she handled our bodies once they were commended to her in the here-after?