Author: Jo Beall

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

with every breath and step on the pilgrimage i contemplate how we all best serve the whole… i believe the bedrock of this query is understanding that all our relations prosper only when we realize we are part of a greater whole and our survival, our sustainability is intricately linked in the same way we are intricately interconnected to every thread in the web of life. It is, always has been and always will be a story of cooperation. Just as all the 70 trillion cells of my body cooperate to make me work, so must the 70 trillion cells to the 70th trillion power cooperate for the cosmos to expand harmoniously…

yes, Martin saw that the will to connect is our most essential impulse and how what affects one of us, affects everyone of us and how could it not since we are one body-mind-spirit-soul made up of trillions of cells to the infinite power…

since every thought, word and deed affects all our relations, may we all walk in wonder, saunter in awe  as shepherds, as lightkeepers, as sheltering arms, as beloveds all walking each other home to the frequency of right thought, right speech and right action…

i’ll close with the words of another pilgrim on  a journey and  wisdom lover…

Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are
your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,
who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,
and the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike
fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing
in the trees in the silence of the fisherman
and the heron, and the trees that keep the land
they stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.

This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power
or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful
when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy
when they ask for your land and your work.
Answer with knowledge of the others who are here
and how to be here with them. By this knowledge
make the sense you need to make. By it stand
in the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.

Speak to your fellow humans as your place
has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.
Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it
before they had heard a radio. Speak
publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.

Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up
from the pages of books and from your own heart.
Be still and listen to the voices that belong
to the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,
by which it speaks for itself and no other.

Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
and the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
which is the light of imagination. By it you see
the likeness of people in other places to yourself
in your place. It lights invariably the need for care
toward other people, other creatures, in other places
as you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

No place at last is better than the world. The world
is no better than its places. Its places at last
are no better than their people…

~ Wendell Berry ~