A Single Garment of Destiny

“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.” – Martin Luther King, Jr..

I keep trying to really grasp the meaning of these words. I nod and say yes, so true – I get it – but I realize I have so much farther to go in really understanding the vast truth in them.

In the sermon that included this quote, Martin Luther King, Jr was talking about the Vietnam war. But I see it relating to all the ways we find to divide ourselves as groups of human beings that are “different”. The divisions just within our country are searing and frightening. Harsh rhetoric about The Other. The fear of the other nationality, the other sexuality, the other skin color, the other parents, the other political party, the other part of that same political party. It’s getting to the point where our divisions have divisions of their divisions….We need more than ever to hear the words that more than one prophet has brought to us – that there is no other – we are all one. Our destiny is connected. Brothers and sisters. Really.

And maybe that’s the message in this covid experience we’re all living through now – if there is a message to be found in it at all. The shocking degree to which we are all connected. I remember seeing the first footage from China, of a horrible illness that was striking so quickly and was so unmanageable, that they were building temporary hospitals. I remember being concerned for them, but it was a while before I realized it would soon be here, too. That they were us. Now we watch waves of variants as they wash over every country, our country, our town, our neighbors and our families, us. It is the great equalizer. Truly, no matter how many ways we try to separate ourselves, we’re all connected.

Heavenly Father, open our eyes to all the ways we are connected, not separate. To the beauty of our differences, and how often they make us not that different, after all. Amen

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. – Chief Seattle

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. – Matthew 25:40

Diana is a founding member of Peace Church. Her 23 and Me DNA report shows they’ve located 1,500 of her relatives, with ancestors in 20 countries. She knows 3 of them.

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