Interconnectedness. A concept that unites us with one another and all that exists.
A concept that calls us to a deeper sense of ourselves.
What does it mean when our personal comfort and well-being
exists side-by-side
with environmental devastation, racial inequity, ever-increasing income gaps, persistent gender inequality, cruelty towards other species... and on and on...
...the list goes on, of all the ways in which we have separated ourselves from one another and the world around us.
In the midst of relative comfort
it's easy
to get lost in our day-in, day-out worries:
no one's life is perfect,
we each have "stuff" that we're dealing with.
And, in dealing with our stuff,
we often forget
that we may be living blessed lives—our basic daily needs are met.
Perhaps more so, we may even have abundance.
The world can no longer wait
for us to find more time,
or be in a better space,
to engage in the issues that need us.
There will always be personal concerns to deal with;
there will always be good excuses that can be found.
Interconnectedness calls us to transcend
that part of ourselves that seeks to keep us small:
that voice
that tells us that we cannot make an impact,
that the problems before us are too large.
Despite inconvenience,
despite personal worries or concerns,
despite knowing with certainty what impact will be made,
there are those who try,
against great odds,
to make this world a better place.
Why not you? Why not me?
Be the change our planet needs.
The interconnectedness of our world rests in each of our hands.
Rev. Manish Mishra-Marzetti is Senior Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Cherry Hill, NJ, and, along with Jennifer Nordstrom, co-editor of a forthcoming Skinner House book on environmental justice.
Today’s practice is to explore interconnectedness by tracing the origins of one or more elements of “relative comfort” in your life. Part of reducing separateness between ourselves and the world around us is knowing where our energy, water, clothing, food, phones, and other elements we depend on come from and whose lives they have impacted along the way. Start by tracing the origins of just one thing.
Today’s resource for deepening this message is “The Story of Stuff,” a 20-minute video that exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. You might also be interested in the book Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, in which author Fred Pearce tells the story of tracking down the sources of his stuff and the people touched by everyday items in his life.
Commit2Respond's Climate Justice Month intends to take you through a transformative spiritual process leading to long-term commitments to climate justice. At the end of the month you will be asked to SHIFT to a low carbon future, ADVANCE human rights, and GROW the movement. Learn more and start thinking about how you will #commit2respond to climate change.
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while dusk undresses sight?
Each dawn incarnates another Earth Day
as Easter morning’s redemptive revolution,
another day of gift-it-forward light,
some longer,
some shorter before naked covered night.
Why interconnected life?
To uncover love’s invitation,
synergy’s self-optimizing mindful meaning.
To discover love’s sustained and vastly interdependent belonging.
To discover how to perpetuate love’s pilot light,
optimize fire’s fuel source
burn rate and flow toward self-identity’s
nurturing heat and light.
Why rehabilitation,
repurposing of people, places,
property and planet?
Regeneration thrives a coincidentally redemptive event,
dawning new each moment and day and life and species,
paradigm and meme,
language and information,
each loving act of synergetic practice.
Rehabilitate and repurpose therapeutic intent
grows implicately spiritual,
explicitly natural,
ecologically and economically sustaining cooperative Paradise Lost
within and without,
coincidentally comprehended landscapes
of Id and SuperEco.
Language both fertilizes and farms vision
sight
sound
feelings.
Speech and thought both repurpose and rehabilitate understanding,
both decompose and regenerate memory, imagination, hope and faith,
despair and longing,
both dissonance and confluence.
Noticing coincidental prime relationship of Id and SuperEco entities
enriches comprehensive fields of perception,
growing consciousness of interdependent synergy,
love between weeds and flowers,
dissonance and confluence,
brothers and sisters all over this organic farm
of deeply resonant ecology.
Id-entity rests simply silent
growing confidence in SuperEco’s comprehensive revolution
resonant resolution
swelling discontented longing
to regenerate active-peacefilled NOW.
SuperEco is to Yang/Yin synergetic power
as Id-entity is to Yang/Yin balancing voiceless listening discernment,
as non-violent intent is to regenerative peace and ecojustice orthopraxis.
Decompositional function of language grows information systemic.
Regenerate function of language creates inspiration,
joy,
insight,
dawning both ecologically wise and economically effective,
synergizing Earth’s peaceful power with comprehensively mindful justice.
SuperEco comprehension both fuels and farms synergy,
organic ecotherapeutic love for all four seasons,
including advent’s winterish purgation,
winnowing Id-entity weeds,
composting Earth Day’s rehabilitating spring.