Blessings in unity

A friend of mine joined us for dinner last night after an afternoon spent making music together. I showed her the struggles I'd been having with yesterday's Thomas post, and she said it still wasn't right; that it ended on an odd note, stepping back into the past.

So this morning I was resolved to find another way to express that tricky notion which so many others have -- I think -- misinterpreted over the years; the notion of the narrow gate that only a few will enter. Because it's not "a few" that will enter; it's a single -- a oneness.

The solution for the problem was handed to me in my reading this morning, in which I was reminded of John Donne's famous quote: "No man is an island."

That's it, I thought: it's understanding that everything is connected that's really the key. Get in touch with that sense of connectedness, and that awareness becomes an awareness of the Divine.

And so I rewrote and redesigned the meditation yet again. And for this blog, today, I resurrected this wonderful shot, taken many years ago on the Oregon coast. Because I suspect that our country, too, will continue to remain troubled until we, too, can come to see that despite our many divisions -- some of them quite deep -- we are one, one rock, one earth, one country, one world beneath it all. Only then will we begin to experience true blessedness.