Not Separate; Very Equal

I've come across a number of life stories recently that speak of the incredible pain of loss, whether it be by death, divorce or estrangement. It's a wonder that some people are able to make it out of bed each morning and put one foot in front of the other. The pain is deep - so deep that it has confirmed for me, once again, the oneness of the human race. We think we are separate individuals, but when we are torn from another, the unity between us becomes vivid in its intensity. We are all connected; we are all strings in a giant web of life.

When disunity or loss occurs in the web of relationships, something physical as well as emotional seems to take place. We hurt; we cry; we mourn until a "scab" begins to grow and cover the wound. Until some scar tissue grows, the cut is gaping and just about anything causes it to open and bleed once again.

The Christian Church compares itself to the Body of Christ. This a good metaphor for the kind of phenomenon that I am describing, but I think that it has become so hackneyed that people don't really buy into it. It's hard to envision myself as an arm or a leg, but as part of a vast network of interconnecting links? Yes, that's easier to comprehend, particularly in the age of the Internet. It wasn't called the World Wide Web by accident.

When I look at a spider web, I am always struck by the gossamer nature of the connections. However, when I try to break the web, it is incredibly strong. It sticks together, even when lying in tangles. Some kind of glue covers all the parts and it is thicker in some places than in others. Humanity is like that.

Humanity's "glue" is Love and perhaps visualizing Love as something tangible might remove it from the world of romance and make it more accessible as something we can create. Each day we have the opportunity to put glue on our connections to the people who touch our lives. Whether we choose to do so or not, our decision affects these people and their connections to the people who touch their lives and the people who touch their lives and the people who... - you get the picture. Merely holding them in prayer can put another layer on the joints and actually taking loving action puts a huge deposit of glue on our linkages.

A spider web has another lesson for me, as well. It is symmetrical. No one part is any better - or less needed -  than another. Humanity is like that, too. We'd like to think, perhaps, that some people are expendable or rotten or not even a part of the whole, but God created each of us and we are all equal in His sight. Hard as it might be to fathom, God loves us all, even those we dislike ourselves. Some of us God cries over, but no one does God abandon.

There are many choices of glue on the store shelves, from those that are easily removable to those that are a permanent bond. It would be nice if there were a sudden run on Gorilla Glue.