I relaxed in my zero-gravity chair where Donna in her chair and I were the only people in the forest and meadows around the abandoned Stonewall Mine, near Julian, California. The gentle breeze caressed, and the birds entertained us. On the ground a squirrel rummaged around with an occasional glance at us, but surprisingly was uninterested in any food we might have. I began to feel a kinship with the squirrel, each of us allowing the other to be what we were. When the squirrel climbed up onto a rock beside my chair, we looked at each other for a long time as it took a break from rummaging and sat with me. I was grateful that it trusted me, and I thought that perhaps it was also intrigued with me as an interesting creature. I know I sensed that we are fellow members of the same Greater Body and I hope that it did too.
Recognizing Our Membership in the Whole
To realize more and more that all things are parts of you, and you are part of them awakens inspiration to contribute and to receive others’ contributions. You love and value your True Self in an inclusive way that loves and values others’ True Selves. This is a fellowship which God nurtures in the Body Universe and it frees us to choose our way wisely in the evolution into which God is calling us onward.
Humans are still learning how to possess the extraordinary capacities imparted to us. Our intelligence continually gets in the way of relating to everything else and we invent complex games to navigate around each other. We are quite able to focus on higher things than material wealth but we retain the imperative of other animals exalting food, territory, and survival as top priority. Not that we need to obsess about consuming materiality. We are capable of allowing the Spirit which incarnates us to extend and enhance life beyond these limits.
How to allow that? I have found that I must stop and wait to be impressed with the mystery of the good, true, and beautiful in my time and place. I contemplate the onward development of the universe, the people we have become which were unimaginable to others long ago, the eternal growth of us becoming a reality we cannot now imagine. This is saying a lot because our imagination seems limitless. Communion with the Whole is to know you are a beloved member with all other beloved members, past, present, and yet to come.
Epiphany in the Chevrolet
I experienced this as a four-year-old lying in the backseat shelf of a Chevrolet cruising in the night across the Nebraska plains watching the Milky Way and singing songs to God. I was not thinking how many members were in this scene, or of the uniqueness of each but just assuming I was one of them in the goodness of Being. Pausing my singing, I enjoyed kinship with the stars and alfalfa fields through which we coasted. My mother in the front seat recognized me connecting and encouraged me to keep singing which, I realize now, caused her to connect in her own way. I had been immersed in my private experience and her few words reminded me that my brothers and parents quietly gliding along in that car were also parts of the Whole. So, I included the mystery of human relations which complexify the Whole with individuality. Even at that young age I found relating to other humans ambiguous. The stars and alfalfa demanded nothing of me, but people expected much.
The complexity of humans and our relations is still a greater, and more disturbing mystery to me than the unknowns about the extent of the universe. But that is the experience of riding the crest of our wave of development as we discover how everyone, and everything fits together.
When we allow our intellect, materiality, and spirituality to unify, as Jesus demonstrated, we are in fitting relation with all else. This causes the Body of the universe to develop as the Creator wills. In this state separation graduates from a mere method for personal advancement, to our shared process of multiplying and growing. We all love our individuality but are still in fellowship and in collaboration for the greater development into a beautiful complexity we cannot comprehend.
