Hebrews 11.3 (CEB)
By faith we understand that the universe has been created by a word from God so that the visible came into existence from the invisible.
Thich Nhat Hanh
True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There’s no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected. Once you are aware of that you are no longer caught in the idea that you are a separate entity.
The world is in the midst of the first Virus War of the 21st Century. It will not be the last. As we retreat into our self-quarantines, the Coronavirus pandemic forces us to separately come together. It also provides us an opportunity to rethink the structure of our interconnected world.
When quarantines end and the machinery of our industrialized, geeked-out, globalized civilization once more grinds into motion, why not actually do that carpe diem thing we’re so quick to plaster on t-shirts and bumper stickers?
Let’s carpe diem ourselves a new global reality, and this time, let’s create one with a lot more compassion and a much slower pace.
You know how when you run yourself too hard, you end up getting sick? If we keep running, eventually our bodies force us to slow down. Today, our entire planet is suffering because we’ve overworked it the way we overwork ourselves. We’ve run everything too hard for too long, ignoring every complaint from the earth and ignoring her current, record-high high fever to our own detriment.
So, while we’re spending some time in social isolation, let’s rethink the way we do life. We have an opportunity to rethink and recreate. We don’t have to go back to the same old thing. We can make lasting, systemic changes, right now.
I think a good place to start is by studying what Jesus, Buddha, Lao-Tzu, Mohammed, and others have to say about organizing our world. For them, society should serve the needs of the poorest rather than cater to the demands of the rich.
All of them want people to break free from the feudal system of Lords and serfs they knew and loathed, and that continues to plague the world today.
Jesus, in particular, teaches us another way to organize society. Instead of a winner-take-all, zero-sum game, with a king on top and everyone else on the bottom, Jesus insists we should live for God and God alone. Actually, Jesus goes further than living for God and wants us to live in God. That means living for each other. Civilizations should be founded on the idea that we are all interconnected parts of God’s wholeness and goodness.
We are all a part of the same thing
We are each other’s caretakers. Servants, not overlords. Paul writes, “though there are many of us, we are one body in Christ, and individually we belong to each other” (Romans 12.4-5, CEB).
Islam teaches us to always do what is best for the Ummah, the entire community—especially the poor, the weak, the widow, the orphan, the immigrant.
Jesus also wants his followers to rethink society’s structures. He continually talks about the “kin(g)dom of heaven.” This isn’t a description of the afterlife, but his vision of an Earth full of creatures in love with each other, serving the common good. When Jesus talks about the kin(g)dom of heaven, he describes it as a right-now place where people willingly serve one another out of a sense of familial duty. And God is the head of the family.
In Matthew 7.21, Jesus says, “Not everybody who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will get into the kingdom of heaven. Only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter.” Jesus is clear that the will of God is to love each other as we love ourselves.
He means this quite literally. We have to love each other as ourselves.
Now, there isn’t much in the Bible I interpret literally. But it seems to me that what Jesus is talking about is learning that we are not separate bodies, but part of one body. Not metaphorically but substantively. Jesus had a more enlightened perspective of reality than we, a surprisingly quantum knowledge of the multiverse.
Considering recent discoveries in quantum physics, I think Jesus was talking about loving each other in a much more extraordinary, quantum-inclusive way than we’ve previously considered.
Jesus teaches us about connectedness to God, and through God to each other. This quantum connection transcends physical spacetime. Jesus understood God as part and parcel of his being and states pretty clearly that we are all fully human/fully divine. The difference is recognition, realization, and acceptance of this natural human trait.
There is a universe within us that operates in that place Paul says is the unseen fabric of the material world. It is a place that awakens us to our transcendent human nature and insists we accept our birthright and get out and serve. The kin(g)dom of heaven is made real through us by the unseen God particles that form all of us, without prejudice.
Everything is connected
I think the only way we create the kindom Jesus so passionately describes is by understanding how intrinsically interconnected we are. We need to see beyond our ethnicities, genders, and borders, into the God-particles that are the fundamental core of existence.
In the quantum world, there is an incredible activity known as “quantum entanglement.”
Scientists have discovered that particles form into connected (entangled) systems.
This means the state of one of the particles—the way it’s spinning and the direction it’s pointing, for example, cannot be determined unless the entire group is simultaneously observed. Also, if one particle in the group changes, the others automatically update to maintain their connection. Even if they’re separated by thousands of miles, probably even light-years. Finally, communication between two particles appears to be, to us, anyway, instantaneous.
Just let that sink in for a moment, because the implications for what it means to be human are enormous. Two particles that are entangled REMAIN entangled even when separated by great distances. And everything is entangled because, in the essence of the quantum creative, we are all literally part of the same thing.
If we are all connected through quantum connections (which we could easily imagine as the network God uses to communicate with the universes), then sub molecularly (at least), anything that happens to you is also happening to me. This realization should immediately make us take note of the way we treat each other and our planet, itself a fundamental aspect of the living consciousness of God.
At the most basic degree of physical being, where atoms are forming us into humans, we are purely entangled God energy.
If we open our minds and allow our senses to be filled with the unexpected, we will sense the connecting love of God energy pulsing through all of creation, from the tiniest speck of sand to the majestic mountains; through you and me; through friend and foe. It is a feeling that reveals the lunacy of seeing enemies in the first place, because, remember: What happens to you is also happening to me.
I pray that keeping this entangled nature in mind will help us join together as humans threatened by an enemy that doesn’t care about our nationality, ethnicity, gender, or sexual preference. Amid this global disaster, there is an opportunity to rethink the way we run the world. God is showing us a new, better way to be entangled with one another, not through commerce, not by being territorial, but by and in the sort of cooperative love that can only be described as salvation.
Amen.
