Spiritual ABC's -- Letter C (another double)

C

CONNECTIONS

Cultivate the art of making connections. See how your life is intimately related to all life on the planet.

Spiritual Literacy -- Reading the Spiritual in Everyday Life, by Frederick and Mary Ann Brussat.

Making connections is an "art."  I never thought about it.  I work, everyday, with my classes, to help young learners "make connections.  Connecting one thing to another is how our brains work to make sense of the world.  If I want to understand the deepest mysteries of astrophysics, I have to begin, quite simply, by learning to describe the properties of matter and energy.  If I want to bake wonderful, indescribably delicious pastries, I have to understand the workings of basic ingredients:  butter, flour, fruit, sugar, eggs.  The operatic diva, must begin by practicing scales and rhythms and tone, until the whole of it comes together in the soaring aria that embodies music and heart and pure magic.

This life that I live is not a singularity.  My life is intimately related to all life on the planet.  Intimately.  Not distantly.  We share in the stuff of creation, all of us.  If we knew of our connectedness; if we felt it and lived it -- could we behave as we do?  What would I do differently if every face looked like part of my own self?

swan