I used to think that the goal of life is to do equally well in the spheres of work and love. Now I know there is only one sphere. What matters is the way I treat everyone I encounter in the course of my days: my wife, my child, a friend, a colleague, a secretary, a textbook salesperson, a complaining student. What's important is to treat each one with courtesy, with respect...with love...We're all connected in a web of love.
At our birth we emerge from the root mystery of the cosmos, a deep and silent mystery into which we will one day be reabsorbed. Our own lives are a spiral pattern of creative unfolding, death, and regeneration. Fashioned out of the creative power of starlight and the fecund body of the Earth, we are the children of Earth and starry heaven caught up in the timeless rhythms of the celestial dance.
~ from "Luminous Alignments" by David Fideler, Parabola 5/'07
Nature's perfect economy is at work in the unfurling of leaves, the structure of galaxies, and the emergence of a butterfly from a chrysalis. Universal patterns, forms and processes are embodiments of efficient harmonies, proportioned relatedness, and ways of sharing. By looking at the world in a certain way, we can see patterns of interconnectedness and come to realize that the world is not a collection of "things", but an unfolding creative process at the deepest level.
