I Thank the Lord for the People I Have Found

After having fallen in love with John Muir and having increasingly grown to love Gary Snyder with every reading, I have been viewing the world around me in an immanent way. By immanent, I mean that God, God being something larger than me at work, is present in all things.

My most spiritually profound moments have consisted of being lost, overwhelmed or alone in nature. Seeing the sky bursting with color over construction or how the sky is reflected onto puddles and lakes, the openness of a mountain valley, the depth of the ocean are all things that astound me; there is so much to be amazed by in nature and is thus why we have such difficulty talking about it without sounding cheesy, hippie or contrived.

Yet, Muir eloquently reminds us that while nature would not be the same without the tiniest being, nature is also not the same without man. Humans in fact, are part of nature and we as humans relate to one another because we are one level of community within nature.

One of my favorite songs of all time is Elton John's "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters." Beyond Elton's gift of an empowered voice and eloquent piano, the lyrics themselves discuss the balance of suffering and good in the world. Though in New York city there are no "rose" trees to remind us of nature's beauty, business men have the potential to look up into the sky every morning, but they never bother to look. Their inability to "know not if it's dark outside or light" intensifies their suffering, allowing injustice in their community. Yet the repeating chorus is "I thank the Lord for the people I have found," suggesting that the goodness in man moves between them and allows for beauty amid destruction.

I pursue a life of seeking to love unconditionally and loving all people. And to a certain extent, that's just what I've been doing. I do my best to listen to others, to understand their actions, to empathize when I feel they have done wrong and to find good in everyone. Yet it wasn't until tonight that I truly understood the divinity within people themselves.

I'm directing a retreat entitled Awakening. My co-director has always represented unconditional love to me because his eyes actually twinkle when he sees you. Tonight the students we selected to give talks met and broke into two groups. They then discussed their ideas for their talks, listened to one another's, and gave feed back. I listened to two talks on Agape, a talk on the holy spirit and a talk on faith. Each person, some of whom I knew well and others I didn't, communicated love so eloquently that their words made me aware of my every breath. Then they would give feed back to one another, pointing out the strength of the person's talk and showing them how to go farther. For those two hours, we were spiritually connected in a way I've never experienced before. My eyes kept welling with tears, though I am not one to shed such emotion, listening to their experiences and understanding of how to love others, how to be open and how to grow. And suddenly I understood the line I loved so much from the Elton John song, "I thank the Lord for the people I have found." Man's ability to relate to one another is as profound as the age of a sequoia, for there are no fragments in all of nature.

The picture at the top is of my best friend and I. We've known each other for over half our life and have a deep, loving, and incredible connection and I am very thankful to have found her and been with her so long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tRgYfQ48A0 (Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters)