I always love looking through the dates and information each month in my calendar that I purchased last year from the Multifaith Action Society. This month, there’s a painting by Robin de Lavis entitled “Searching.” This is what she has to say about this piece:
“There are times in our lives that call us to rise above a situation no matter how challenging it may be. From this higher perspective we can search for deeper meaning when trusting our inner light to guide us.”
Ain’t that the truth! I’m not sure about you, but I tend to think my way through the situations I face. In those moments and in the darkest of my days, I often find myself thinking that if I could just break the issue or situation down into small and manageable pieces, I can think my way through in a linear fashion.
When my thinking goes in that direction – mechanistic and linear, I’ve been trying a new tactic lately and that is to remember our interdependence – that life itself is interdependent. The whole of us is connected to the land, the water, the forests – the atmosphere. Under the earth, we can see that there is an invisible connectedness. There is a light inside each living being on this planet. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote comes to mind – “everything is made of one hidden stuff.”
If I let it, the events of the world can cause a heaviness that can permeate my everyday activities and interactions with others. This piece reminds me that we are connected to each other and there is strength in that! We are active co-creators in the world and that life will continue to flourish no matter what we do.
Process theology shows us that just as God/Spirit is both creator and always creating, we are active participants in the act of creation and that the light of life exists in us all. In taking a wider view, a higher perspective, I remember that I am not broken – that we are not broken because it’s our relationships to each living being that bring me/us to health, wholeness, and (w)holiness.
May it ever be so!