The Binding Unity

There is a unity that binds all living things into a single hole. This unity is sensed in many ways. Sometimes, when walking alone in the woods far from all the traffic which makes up the daily experience, the stillness settles in the mind. Nothing stirs. The imprisoned self seems to slip outside its boundaries and the ebb and flow of life is keenly felt. One becomes an indistinguishable part of a single rhythm, a single pulse.

Sometimes there is a moment of complete and utter identity with the pain of a loved one; all the intensity and anguish are felt. One enters through a single door of suffering into the misery of the whole human race with no margin left to mark the place which was one’s own. What is felt belongs nowhere but is everywhere binding and holding in a tight circle of agony until all of life is gathered into a single timeless gasp!

There are other moments when one becomes aware of the thrust of a tingling joy that rises deep within until it bursts forth in radiating happiness that bathes all of life in its glory and its warmth. Pain, sorrow, grief are seen as joy “becoming” and life gives a vote of confidence to itself, defining its meaning with a sureness that shatters every doubt concerning the broad free purpose of its goodness.

There are the times of personal encounter when a knowledge of caring binds to together and what is felt is good! There is nothing new nor old, only the knowledge that what comes as the flooding insight of love binds all living things into a single whole. The felt reverence spreads and deepens until to live and to love are to do one thing. To hate is to desire the nonexistent of the object of hate. To love is the act of adoration and praise shared with the Creator of life as the Be-all and the End-all of everything that is.

And yet there always remains the hard core of the self, blending and withdrawing, giving and pulling back, accepting and rejoicing, yielding and unyielding—what might what may this be but the pulsing of the unity that binds all living things in a single whole—the God of life extending Himself in the manifold glories of His creation?

(For the Inward Journey: the writings of Howard Thurman.
Selected by Anne Spencer Thurman. pages 180-181
Originally published in The Inward Journey)

“And yet.” I think this is part of what makes Thurman so precious to me. He makes a sweeping, grand and beautiful statement: “To love is the act of adoration and praise shared with the Creator of life . . .” I’m ready to dance with that!

“And yet.” Whoops! Not dancing, but confronted by “the hard core of the self.” Well, for me, that is another dance step Another challenge in finding my way toward adoration and praise.

“And yet,” the “hard core” is itself dancing! “Blending and withdrawing, yielding and unyielding.” This “hard” is in motion, is not only being but becoming. As one who imagines that the divine spirit is found in the act of creation, including the re-creation that our conscience calls us to when we confront injustice, here has been the Divine all along.

All over this country, people whose consciences are troubled by the state of things will march today. I will not be joining my neighborhood colleagues in Manhattan but plan on joining my congregants in Mineola. We’ll make demands, and I hope we will change the course of things. But even as we do, we will be about the “giving and pulling back, accepting and rejoicing” which marks our species. Our heart-minds will be moved and a new assessment of what is right and what is possible will appear. And we will continue this dance toward a great and grand Unity “that binds all things in a single whole.”