“The goldsaddle goatfish is a beautiful golden fish–similar in size and behavior to a red mullet–vulnerable to numerous larger predators, including humans, within the waters around Hawaii. Divers around the region have recently begun to notice a striking and much larger fish, of an identical yellow-gold color, swimming in the same sea. When divers swim right next to this big fish it stops being a big fish altogether, breaking up into eight or so standard-sized goldsaddle goatfish. It appears that the fish swim extremely close together, in a perfect fish-shaped pattern, when they feel threatened. Another one of the million examples in nature of how we living creatures shed our vulnerability when we join together and swim as one.”
~ Matt Haig, The Comfort Book
“In science, this boundlessness of the individual body and the cosmic body has more recently found its echo in ecology. The whole ecosystem of living beings, we might say, is connected through a network of relationships, and, to some extent, the erasure of the boundaried self. A human body and a tree, and the bird that dwells in that tree, say, are linked through such networks–networks that ecologists are just beginning to decipher… It’s interconnectedness.”
~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Song of the Cell
We are the spiritual collective.
We are the body of the Christ.
You.
Me.
The whole of the known universe. Unknown too, come to think of it.
This is not a matter of faith. This is not a matter of belief. We are, whether we like it or not, all the same family, all the same tribe. The tribe of All That Is. One creation, one intertwined life burbling through the eons in spectacular form.
We are interconnected, you and I.
You and the sea. Me and the fungus. We and the stars.
The Spiritual Collective.
None left out.
Read that again. None Left Out.
We hold each other up, every one. Every one.
A challenge to you, and especially to me.
Let’s swim together.
Time to love louder.
“Humans, too, can be saved by each other. Each year’s human rights struggles, catastrophes, or pandemics are examples of how people pull together in a crisis. How neighbors turn to neighbors. Friends to friends. Allies to allies. We have each other. Togetherness is a rule of nature.”
~ Matt Haig, The Comfort Book
All that talk of togetherness brought on the nostalgia. Just a wee bit of ours through the years:
Tucked happily into the gorgeous hills and woods of Wisconsin, I write about life, faith, and the humor that both require. 
Tales From the Nexus 
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