You’ll notice that the first thing they do is look for someone they know. Their eyes will search the room trying to find a connection.
That’s what we humans do all our lives… We look for connections. We want to know where we fit in.
It is interesting that one of the functions of all religions is to tell just that. Religion defines our relationship to the Supreme Ultimate…God. It defines our relationship to our fellow man and tells us how we are to get along to each other. It defines for us where we fit into the picture. It defines connections.
In Buddhism the focus is on the fact that we are all ONE. They believe that a kind of veil clouds our minds to keep us from seeing that. The function of enlightenment is to lift that veil. Think of how a fish might perceive you if it couldn’t see above the surface of its’ water and you opened your hand and put your fingers in the water. The fish would see five different, and apparently unrelated, things in its’ environment. Beyond its’ veil those five different things are all part of one greater.
In the three great Western religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam the message is the same but told differently. The real focus of Genesis is not that we all come from Adam and Eve….it is that we all come from God.
Anyone who has done genealogy for some time will tell you that it has dawned on them that we are all ultimately related. When I began doing it the long lists of bloodlines in the scriptures began to take on new significance. Adam begat Seth, Seth begat Enos, Enos beget Cainan and so on. It is a way to remind us that we are all directly connected to God!
Even scientists are beginning to understand our connections. Biologists have traced our origins back to a common mother and father. We are all Brothers and Sisters in the same family.
Cosmologists tell us that we all came from the same source. The matter that we are all made up of was created in the stars. The stars themselves all came from a single point wherein all time, space, matter and energy were one. Everything is connected.
What is ironic in the human psyche is that while we crave connection…we also crave independence. Just ask the parent of a teenager! We all want to be seen as separate, independent and unique.
These two aspects of our reality are at odds in us. We are at war with ourselves. Sometimes we cooperate with each other…sometimes we compete with each other. Secretly most of us believe that there is a kind of caste system among our kind. We are better than… But we are not quite as good as….
I find myself falling into that too often. I have come to remind myself when I look in the face of a stranger that this is not some alien. This is a human being …made in the image of the Living God… We are not separate…we are family. We share the same potential, the same flaws.
We are…connected.
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