everything is connected

 empathic leap after leap

empathy is the gateway

into imitating the idea of God,

that underlying presence which is of Creation itself

and knows and expresses how everything is connected,

empathy is the key to escape the prison

within which individuality can encase us,

often we can be seduced by pushing 

who we feel ourselves to be onto the other,

congratulating ourselves that we know another

for we figure they are just like us,

commonality comforts us with the old,

difference stretches us with the new,

such a leap of projecting ourselves onto others helps a bit

to get us a small step out of our ego-centrism,

but, unfortunately, it also reinforces the limiting mistake

 that who we are is really just who others are,

instead we should celebrate both commonality and difference,

diversity, equity, inclusion,

shouts at us to expand perspective,

such as the challenging Christian call to love our enemy,

for they are also somehow us,

a further empathic step draws us 

to connect with other primates, with other mammals,

so that our wolf cousins should not be killed with prejudice,

our whale cousins should not be turned into meat,

instead we should marvel at whatever they are doing 

with their being, with their song,

birds can also spark us to love and joy in their being,

then what about insects?

can we feel as the ant? as the cicada?

as the caterpillar and its metamorphosis?

and that's only in the Animal Kingdom,

scientists and gardeners and lovers of beauty

reach to understand the Plant Kingdom,

how Gaia, the great alchemist, captures the Sun as sugar

so that life has energy, and finds itself with purpose,

somehow hidden within the gestalt of plant structures,

such a world calls us to leap where we don't know where to go,

we need to imagine ourselves throughout a great tree,

in the hope of a flower,

in the cooperation of root and mycelia,

for us to become more of who we should be,

we need a life of empathic leap after leap,

not only into living things but also into rock and their children,

we need to recreate ourselves 

in the image of the Divine 

that holds all together.

by Henry H. Walker

July 26, ‘24