Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Interbeing

     "Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone." Margaret J. Wheatley

      “As human beings, we all … search for a sense of connection, pattern, order, and significance … the fitting, truthful relationships among things.” 

       Parks SD. “Big questions, worthy dreams. Mentoring young adults in their search for meaning, purpose, and faith.” John Wiley & Sons, 2000.

      “many people are scared to death of their deeper nature. … these people – more than the others … are longing to connect with their warrior’s heart and with the hearts of their fellow humans.” 

       Lesser E. “Broken open. How difficult times can help us grow.” Villard, 2005.

      “When we come to perceive our interconnectedness, we come to know that fundamentally we each want and need the same things – we each want happiness and we don’t want suffering. Then we begin to see through the veil of illusion that obscures our views to the point where we wind up justifying or even passively accepting the denial of civil rights. A true awakening would have us step back and expand our awareness that all living beings are impacted by our thoughts, speech, and actions. If we can develop this awareness, we naturally come to universal love and compassion for the welfare of all ‘others.’ We might even notice someone amidst our daily routine standing a little taller and straighter, and breathing more freely.

     We are constantly ‘voting’ with our words, thoughts, and deeds for how the world is and shall be."
       Das LS. "The Big Questions. A Buddhist Response to Life’s Most Challenging Mysteries.” Rodale, 2007.

      “all life is interrelated” … we are all “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Martin Luther King Jr


     “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . . 
     This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . .  And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
     Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other." 
       Thomas Merton, OCSO was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist, and scholar of comparative religion. 


Angels among us

1 comment:

  1. thank you, mercy, wa'lalin, danke, obrigado, gracias ......... ... we are one ~!

    ReplyDelete