Reflection
It may be said that we are the product of our lifelong connections, a hub of connectivity in the network that is our life. We mediate and facilitate and communicate on many levels. We are conduits of energy for building up and tearing down and making all things new. Forming bonds and building bridges are our gifts to the universe. Links that lead to destructive deeds are the wounds we leave behind. Since we are all connected, let us make the most of it by moving beyond the banal and searching for opportunities to join forces and pool resources for the greater good. Spirit linked to spirit can transcend our limitations moving with the speed of light to liberate and bless.
Miriam Therese Winter
Prayer
May we learn to live in harmony.
Action
Focus on connections rather than divisions. Resist the rhetoric of hate and exclusion. Look for commonalities rather than differences. Be a healer not a divider.
Suggested Reading
Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
Ephesians 4:2-3
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
Colossians 3:12-14
Whenever we do something together, something good, something beautiful, everyone changes. All of us change in some way and this does us good.
Pope Francis
For it is in giving that we receive.
Francis of Assisi
We build too many walls and not enough bridges.
Isaac Newton
Successful people build each other up. They motivate, inspire, and push each other. Unsuccessful people just hate, blame, and complain.
Anonymous
We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.
Herman Melville
Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep. William James
In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart, there is the power to do it.
Marianne Williamson.
Everything you do has an impact. Who you are – that you are – actually matters. In an interconnected world (the only kind we have), our actions and the actions of others are inextricably linked- we are always and forever in a dance of mutual influence with those with whom we directly and indirectly participate. It is the unavoidable reality of being social creatures, only magnified by an ever-increasingly complex and interwoven societal structure. We matter to each other.
Paul Greiner
The purpose of life is not to win. The purpose of life is to grow and to share. When you come to look back on all that you have done in life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasure you brought to other people’s lives that you will from the times that you outdid and defeated them.
Harold Kushner