Interrelatedness

"All I'm saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that somehow we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality."

—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr (Warren, Mervyn A.; Taylor, Gardner C. (2008). King Came Preaching: The Pulpit Power of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. InterVarsity Press. p. 174.)

"Either you look at the universe as a very poor creation out of which no one can make anything or you look at your own life and your own part in the universe as infinitely rich, full of inexhaustible interest, opening out into infinite further possibilities for study and contemplation and interest and praise. Beyond all and in all is God."

--Thomas Merton (A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life, p. 111)

The incarnate Word is with us,

is still speaking, is present

always, yet leaves no sign

but everything that is.

--Wendell Berry (Given: Poems )

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church--

I keep it, staying at Home--

With a bobolink for a Chorister--

And an Orchard, for a Dome--

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.

--Emily Dickinson (236, The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W.
Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999))