Faith Matters

We all are truly 'One'

500 miles of Camino Frances teaches truth

I like to experience the universe as one harmonious whole. Every cell has life. Matter, too, has life; it is energy solidified. The tree outside is life ... The whole of nature is life ... The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can't grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.

-- Albert Einstein

The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally, stardust.

― Neil deGrasse Tyson

Genetic research has revealed we share our DNA with every living organism. We share 99.9 percent of our DNA with each other, 98 percent with chimpanzees, 36 percent with fruit flies and 15 percent with mustard grass.

Anthropologists have long known all humans are descendants of the homo sapiens that left their African homeland some 80,000 years ago to colonize the world. We all emerged from the same family. You are about the 50th cousin to your most distant relative on the planet.

That we are all "One", that everything has emerged from the same source, is a theological notion I have accepted for a long time. Intellectually and philosophically, it has made sense to me. But until this summer, I never fully grasped the implications of the concept.

After 10 years of church planting and tending, I took a sabbatical and walked the Camino de Santiago de Postela. I walked it twice, actually. First, I walked the Camino Frances -- 500 miles from St Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago, Spain. I was only home 12 hours when I realized I had more walking to do. So I returned to Spain and walked the path known as El Norte -- another 500 miles of rugged coastline, pristine beaches and steep mountain trails.

Somewhere along the way, I realized -- in my heart and in my bones, not just in my head -- we are indeed all of the same substance. The awakening began first as I walked alongside fellow pilgrims -- sometimes for minutes, sometimes for days. I walked with people from every continent, people of every skin color, those who were religious and nonreligious, people who owned yachts and people with all their possessions on their backs. Conversations were sometimes trivial and sometimes profoundly moving. And I learned -- without a doubt -- that we were One.

For thousands of years, long before Christianity, people recognized the path as sacred and walked the stony way. And those who walked the way were changed by the experience. The camaraderie, the magnificent vistas, the hospitality offered and received, the shared hardship, the natural meditation that flows from simply putting one foot in front of another, the simplicity of life on the path -- all combine to produce an elixir that offers great joy and insight into the nature of reality.

And it wasn't simply that I now knew the humans that inhabited the planet earth were of one body. I could now grasp that every creature that scampered or slithered across the trail, every bird that soared in the sky above, every rock I stumbled over, every drop of rain that fell on my head, was of the same substance as well. For decades, I've preached and taught and written about the idea. The Camino taught me it was true.

Coming home from a life-changing, mountaintop experience can be challenging. But ultimately, the value of any spiritual transformation is made evident in the good that results from it. I'm still looking for "oneness" around me. And sometimes I see it -- if I look through a lens that perceives unity in a political environment that tends to divide us.

In two weeks the Jewish, Christian and Muslim members of Congregation Etz Chaim, All Saints' Episcopal Church and the Bentonville Islamic Center will gather for a picnic on the property where they hope to soon build a sacred space where they will all worship under the same roof. For me, it's a way of bringing the Camino home -- a way of sharing the vision that we are all truly One.

To see the world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

-- William Blake

NAN Religion on 10/01/2016

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