Lectio:
“What is important in nonviolence is the contemplative truth that is not seen. The radical truth of reality is that we are all one.”
— Thomas Merton, Blessed are the Meek
Meditatio:
We live in a violent world.
Even those of us fortunate enough to have been spared direct physical violence cannot deny its presence all around us. This is nothing new. In the book of Genesis, Cain — the firstborn child of Adam and Eve — killed his only brother Abel, and the cycle of violence has continued ever since: brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor, nation against nation.
This is what we do when we forget who we are.
We have chosen the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil over the fruit of the Tree of Life. We have surrendered ourselves to brokenness — to selfish desires, petty grievances, and the darkness that takes root in the heart when it turns away from love (Romans 1:21).
And in doing so, we have forgotten something essential.
We were all — each and every one of us — formed from the same dust and given the same breath of life (Genesis 2:7). Ensouled bodies. Embodied souls. Birthed from the selfsame Source to which we will also return. These bodies we inhabit are not incidental to who we are — they are the very means by which we encounter God, one another, and the world. They are, as Paul reminds us, temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). And yet we fight for, over, and with them as though they were the whole of us — as though the boundaries they appear to draw between us were final and absolute.
They are not.
At the level of ordinary experience, our separateness feels undeniably real. But beneath that experience lies something deeper — a fundamental unity that the mystics have always known and that even the natural world, at its most elemental level, seems to confirm. Nothing that exists is truly isolated. Everything that has ever been in relationship remains in relationship. The boundaries we perceive are real, but they are not ultimate. They are not the deepest truth about us.
When we begin to remember this — slowly, imperfectly, by grace — something in us begins to shift.
The will to fight gives way to the will to love. Anger, envy, and jealousy soften into empathy and compassion. Selfish desires and petty grievances open, however reluctantly, into solidarity and healing.
This remembering is not an escape from the body but a redemption of it. God did not send His Son to free us from our humanity but to redeem it from within — to enter fully into flesh, into suffering, into death, and to transform all of it from the inside out (John 1:14). The Incarnation is God’s declaration that matter matters. That these bodies, these lives, these ordinary moments of contact between human beings — all of it is the very ground on which love does its work. Our particularity is not a problem to be overcome. It is the gift through which we are given to one another.
In Christ, we are all one. What happens to one of us happens to all of us. All suffering and all love are shared. To persecute, harm, or hate one person is to persecute, harm, or hate all people — and to persecute, harm, or hate Christ Himself, in whose body we all abide (Acts 9:4–5; Matthew 25:40). We are one body with many parts, each bearing its own unique purpose within and for the whole (1 Corinthians 12:12). The only barrier between us is the one we build in our own imaginations.
May we, by grace and for love, allow that barrier to fall away — that we might live, at last, in the truth of our oneness (John 17:21).
Oratio:
Bodies born of dust,
the selfsame dust
formed from Love —
breathed in with life,
the selfsame life
animated with Love.
One body,
one flesh,
one being,
one will —
in Christ,
as Christ,
for Christ.
Divided by desire,
fractured by sin,
separated in imagination,
called into communion,
drawn into oneness,
remembering Love.
Contemplatio:
If the deepest truth about you is that you are one with every other human being — formed from the same dust, given the same breath, held in the same Love — what would change about the way you treat the person you find most difficult to love?
Related Scripture:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” — Galatians 3:28
For Further Reading:
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Present To God’s Presence: Noticing God’s Presence In Ordinary Moments Of Grace
~Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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