Solidarity

“While modern astronomy tells us of our insignificance beneath the stars, it also tells us that if we lift so much as a finger, we affect them… The magnitude of the world with whose destiny we are bound up increases rather than diminishes our importance.”
~ Alan Watts, Importance (from Become What You Are)

“Our sentience defines our possibilities but in no way delimits the boundaries of the possible for us. We are the species that grows into itself. We are creatures who are forever learning and, as a consequence, modulating both ourselves and the world.”
~ Jon Kabat-Zinn, Coming to Our Senses

Ripples and butterfly wings.

Conservation laws and spooky action at a distance.

Heart ties and umbilical cords that never really sever.

We are so tethered to the whole, so magnificently peanut-buttered together, so intertwined, so very One. One love. One life. (Let’s get together and feel alright.) One beating heart of a universe. Zoom in or out far enough, either direction, and it is crystal clear.

And yet, and yet…

At the very same time, here at this magnification, in this singular focus that is ours, we are individuated just enough to be somehow convinced we are islands separate and apart from all others.

Where the world ends and I begin seems so apparent.
Zoom out.

The bounding line between me and thee seems so obvious.
Zoom in.

It is hard to remember that my actions affect you when you live 50 or 500 or 5,000 miles away and we may not see each other this week, or this year, or ever. Harder still to see in our little space of time, how my words yesterday might affect the seventh generation on down the line. Nevertheless, we know it to be true.

It is not easy to see it all from another point of view. It takes a healthy imagination coupled with some humble astonishment at the naked facts of science to even attempt it. It’s no wonder that we fail to grasp any vision from these far-flung vantage points, much less hold that gaze for more than a few moments.

I am the first to admit that I struggle to live into the reality of unity when separateness is so much easier to swallow. The delusion persists, and I have the hardest time treating the one thing in front of me as though I believed in its eternal significance. I have the hardest time thinking and acting for seven generations and an entire planet. I have the hardest time seeing through space and time and knowing that my teensy insignificant self can affect the cosmos, that I am modulating not only myself, but the world.

I am also the first to admit that in those specks of time when I can let go of myself, let go of my ideas and my desires and my compulsions and my mission for the moment and just rest in the womb of that moment, the bubble pops and it is clear. I am granted, for that small span of time, the wide-field vision of the Whole superimposed with that Magic School Bus dive into the fibers of reality. Experience corroborates, for one small moment, with the unfathomable reality that I inexplicably deny with the thoughts and actions of the rest of my life.

“The less you struggle against the flow of life, the freer you become. Radical powerlessness is radical freedom, liberating you from the need to control the ocean of life and freeing you to learn how best to navigate it.”
~ Rabbi Rami Shapiro

One experience here. One experience there. Beads of clear vision. Threads of compassion. Knots of perfect love.

They all add up, every one, and eventually those experiences of theophany and true sight start stringing themselves together, weaving a scaffold from which to hang our lives. Something to hold us up, heads and hearts above the dustbowls of separation, clear air to breath over the smog of illusion that keeps us apart. Something to help us to modulate the world a little better.

“Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others’ faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth or modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you are.”
~ Rumi

May we give this day our attention.
Right now.
Twelve minutes from now.
At the dinner table.
As we brush our teeth.

May we give this moment our gaze, our breath, our wide-eyed and closed-eyed wonder,
That we might catch as many epiphanies as we can hold,
And that our fantastic string of epiphanies might hold us up
Above the persistent delusion.

That we might learn the truth of our unity,
Across the fences, walls, and differences,
Forward through the days and decades and eras,
Unbounded.

That we might learn to love louder.

“A little bit louder now…”
~ The Isley Brothers