We have been talking about the lessons
mother earth teaches us so that we can be happy and joyful tenants on
this planet earth. I have identified ten lessons earth teaches us and
if we learn from them, we can create heaven on earth. Two weeks ago,
we talked in detail about the first lesson, which is Diversity
is Divinity distributed.
I said that the diversity we see all
around us—the diverse plants, animals and people belonging to 5000
ethnic groups is God's creation. God is present in all of them.
Diversity is divinity distributed. When we see God in all of
it, accept and appreciate it, our lives will begin to change.
So the second lesson that follows from
the notion of diversity is that of inter-dependence. We
are part of a universe that is inter-related and inter-dependent.
Once I told a friend that the tree was in him and he gave me this
funny look?
What do you mean? he asked.
Whether you agree with it or not, whether you are aware of it or not,
each time you take a breath, you are in communion with plants and
trees. The plants receives CO2 from us and give us clean O2. If the
trees didn't exist you won't. You are interconnected and
interdependent. Once you become aware of this, you will start looking
at plants and trees with new eyes.
If the plants don't do photosynthesis
and give us O2, we are toast. But without the light from the sun, the
plants will be helpless to produce O2. Without the heat from the sun
there won't be much evaporation of the oceans. Without evaporation
and formation of clouds, there won't be rain. Without rain, the
plants wont grow and flourish. See how the whole thing is
inter-related.
Let us take the case of the butterfly.
The beautiful butterfly that we see freely flying around, was once a
caterpillar. It all started when the butterfly laid a small egg on
the leaf of a plant. God decided that the butterfly's egg should have
a little sticky substance to it so that when it lays the egg on a
leaf which tosses in the wind, the egg won't fall off and be
destroyed. See how carefully God takes care of the minutest details
of the life of a small butterfly. And you think he doesn't care
about us humans who are created in the image and likeness of God?
The eggs of birds don't have any sticky
substance on them because birds lay their eggs in secure nests.
Butterfly don't have that luxury and so God makes special provisions
for them. So the egg of the butterfly hatches and grows on the leaf
by eating the leaf. So it is dependent on the leaf for its survival.
Once it is viable, it moves to the branch of the tree and hangs there
for 38 days until the process of metamorphosis is complete and the
butterfly is born. Then it needs the nectar from the flowers which
grow on plants and turn around and return to the plants to lay an
egg on the leaf of that plant. You see the interdependence.
So interconnection and
interdependence are inbuilt realities of the universe.
The plants and animals and and sun and
moon and other stars of the universe understand that. Mother earth
not only understands that , but functions as a safe abode for her
creatures, that includes us. She accommodates the large elephants and
and smallest ants, the poisonous snakes and the harmless reptiles,
the tallest giraffe and the tiniest tortoise. Since it is tinny and
close to the ground, God made sure it had a protective shell so that
it won't be easily trampled and killed by bigger creatures.
So the plants and every other creature
seem to understand the interconnection and interdependence on each
other except us, humans. We are too smart. We create divisions
between races, cultures and religions.
The root cause of our unhappiness
and misery is the mistaken belief that we are separate from the earth
and other humans. It is called separation illusion.
It is the thinking that as nations,
religions, and races we are separate from other nations and religions
and races and that we are better than others that our interests
should be taken care of regardless of what happens to others.
I call this illusion because, if you
really think about it you will find that we are not separate. Mother
earth teaches us a lesson of interconnection and interdependence. You
are never going to be happy and joyful in your earthly life, if you
refuse to learn that lesson.
Let me share with you a personal story
of how I experience that interconnection and interdependence on a
daily basis and how it helps me to have a joyful life. I like you to
hear it as a meditation.
In 2010, I had knee surgery for a torn
meniscus. About six people were directly involved in my surgery;
but about six billion were indirectly involved to make it all
happen.
Now what do I mean by that? Early that
morning, I took a shower in the water that was supplied by the city
of Coral Springs. I was thinking of the thousands of people who were
involved in the harnessing, purification and channeling of that water
to my house on that particular street.
The people who manufactured the pipes
that made that water flow safe. The companies that made the water
purification chemicals. The people who made the hot water tank in my
house; the technicians who installed it. The people in the company
that made the shower head. The people at Home Depot who sold
it to me. When I think like that, the number of people involved in
giving me a hot shower that morning, multiplies by the thousands.
Remember, the the day has barely
started, and millions are still going to be involved.
I was wearing a shirt that morning
which was made in Bangladesh. The label said: Made in
Bangladesh 100% cotton. Usually people don't pay attention to
these things but I do, and I make it an occasion for prayer and it
has a lot to do with the peace and joy I feel in my life.
I thought of the thousands of people
who were involved in making that shirt, starting with the poor
villagers who produced the cotton, a grandmother who might have woven
that cotton into threads in a small factory in a remote village. Her
emotions of fear, and hope or hopelessness have been woven into the
threads that made my shirt which is now covering my body. I think
of the people who made the machine that stitched my shirt together;
the person who folded it, packed it, sealed and placed it on a truck
to the nearest railway station. The fears, cares and energies of of
all those people are part of the fabric I am wearing that day.
Then I think of the train that
transported it to the nearest airport in Bangladesh and off to a
cargo plain bound for Arkansas, the headquarters of Walmart.
And from there, it is unloaded, coded and re-routed into a truck that
goes a 1000 miles to a Walmart in Coral Springs. Think of the
thousands of employees whose joint effort made that shirt appear on a
rack, and I pick it up, pay for it with a credit card, issued by a
bank that has another ten thousand employees, who make sure that
Walmart is paid on my behalf. You see the endless connections
with people that make it all possible.
I am only talking about the shirt now.
The pants I am wearing that day has a story of its own. And don't
start me with the Fruit of the Loom underwear.
The day has barely begun, and I have
not gotten to the Surgery Center yet. My wife drives me there in a
car that has 2200 different parts. Those 2200 parts of the car have
been touched by the energy, imagination, and efforts of another
million people, not here, but somewhere in Japan.
Then I walk into the Surgery Center,
and there is the girl at the front desk, who registers me on a Dell
Computer which has 5000 parts, that was made in China...and now
another billion Chinese people are getting involved in my life that
day.
Then I am taken into the prep room,
and I am surrounded by half a dozen people, nurses,
anesthesiologist, my doctor, recovery room personnel. I am thinking
of all the people who are connected to them by extension, their
families, friends, the communities they belong to etc.
Then they put me under, using this
sedation medication that was manufactured in a medical lab in
Nebraska, shipped via Fed Ex planes and a Fed Ex driver brings it to
the facility. An unknown Fed Ex driver and all the people in his
life have now gotten involved in my life.
And then there is this million dollar
medical equipment with a zillion parts, lights, camera and laser
beams that will make three holes on my knee, will probe the damaged
area, and this doctor whom I have seen only twice in my entire life,
will scrape it, repair it and and make it all right.
That morning, I was held tenderly
and directly in the hands of six human beings, but I was indirectly
supported and lovingly sustained by the energy of six billion people.
And the funny thing is that I was
completely unconscious, totally at the mercy of a group of
strangers.
May be not; they are strangers
only in a superficial sense. In a deeper sense, they are my
spiritual siblings, sharing a home planet. And it doesn't matter one
of them was gay, another trans-gendered or another was Black or
Hispanic...it doesn't' matter...they are all created in the image and
likeness of God, all of them children of God.
This is just one scenario of a single
human interaction. This happens in our lives, every day. You don't
have to go into surgery to experience it. Where ever there is a human
interaction or transaction, this scenario of interconnection and
interdependence plays out all the time.
It is called unity consciousness.
Unity with the entire humanity, and in that unity, divinity is
contained.
Apostle Paul is teaching us the same
earthly lesson, in today's reading about one body and many parts.
Just as each body part is connected to and depended on the other, we
are all connected to each other. And we are connected as members of
the one body of Christ.
Any sense of selfishness,
seclusion and separation is a wound in the body of Christ. Any sense
of division, discord, and disunity is a rupture in the body of
Christ. It is antithetical to the ethos of the earth which is a
unified whole, inviting us to wholeness and holiness.
So let the
unity of the universe help us experience unity within us, between us,
and around us and inspire us to live as members of the body of
Christ, experiencing heaven on earth.
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