A small globe on a bookshelf in my workspace catches my eye. I pick it up and feel connected with the realization that all of humankind is fastened to the earth, a whirling sphere suspended in the inky black universe.
We are tethered to our world composed of forests and deserts, mountains and plains, water and ice. We are souls, alive at this time in history and herstory through God’s grace. We are star stuff, space travelers, and pilgrims on an evolutionary journey leading to transformation. We are the neophyte, the unborn, rocking in the waters of our mothers’ wombs. We are dependent infants, energetic teens, mellowing middle-agers, wise elders, and we are the dead…our bodies at last returned to dust. We are sick, healthy, wealthy, and destitute.
We live out our lives in myriad ways through varying stages of…hunger and abundance, suffering and elation, confusion and clarity. We are a tribe of believers and unbelievers, saints and murderers, and each of us is capable of expressing generosity and greed, compassion and revenge. We are on our planetary voyage…together…here and now.
Our collective soup of humanity is simmering, stirred by the hand of fear, seasoned with the salt of our tears and peppered with too many wars. This unsavory soup has been cooking for millennia and it has reached the boiling point. We whirl round and round in our comic soup-pot, while day becomes night and night returns to day. Like the nursery rhyme forecasts….Round and round we go and where we’ll stop nobody knows.
A reassuring fact is that our home, this blessed earth, is suspended exactly the right distance from the sun and the moon. The seasons come and go and all the while we keep turning, like an entranced whirling dervish, we twirl.. together…tethered in our particular place in time and space. Species disappear, the ice cap melts, and the revolving door…the eternal portal for birthing and dying…also goes round and round.
Images taken by the Hubble telescope reveal our world as a planet without boundaries. From a “God’s eye” view we are indistinguishable as black or white, male or female, rich or poor, Christian or Muslim. From a distance, we blend into the landscape, we merge with the giant redwoods, the Atlantic and Pacific, the earthworm and the gazelle. From afar we merge together with all living things, with the earth Herself, as one living being.
After all, we humans are simply a thread in the weave of the tapestry of Creation. Each thread is dependent on the next and the next in order for the weave to hold, and lately it feels as if the warp needs mending, the threads are coming undone and the tapestry is in urgent need of repair. We are filaments of every variety…each strand is precious, unique, and purposeful. Each fiber is intrinsically beautiful as a separate entity…but when we are woven together, when we discover ways to co-exist and co-create within community, when we reach out to one another for compassionate connection to share our resources, wisdom, and creative gifts…then the weave of our human tapestry grows strong and resilient.
I turn the little globe in my hand and kiss her wounded places. If only it were this simple. Kiss it and make it better.
I return the replica of the world to its place on the bookshelf while the questions arise…
How might I help to repair the weave of Creation’s tapestry?
What necessary ingredients will it take to re-season the rancid fear-based soup that’s boiling over?
What is God’s invitation for each of us in the midst of the chaos of this time of transformation?
Where should we search for the lost key to Eden?
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