Quotes about Interconnectedness

The idea that when the health of one member suffers, the health of the whole body is lowered is a teaching of St Paul which is timeless.

None of us is alone in this world; each of us is a vital piece of the great mosaic of humanity as a whole.

Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

What affects one in a major way, affects all in a minor way.

The bounds of a personality are not reproducible by a sharp black line, but...each of us flows imperceptibly into adjacent people and things.

We are connected to things that have been forced on us, such as the sins of others

By ethical conduct toward all creatures, we enter into a spiritual relationship with the universe.

Life is relationship, living is relationship. We cannot live if you and I have built a wall around ourselves and just peep over that wall occasionally. Unconsciously, deeply, under the wall, we are related.

The same strength which has extended our power beyond a continent has also interwoven our destiny with the destiny of many peoples and brought us into a vast web of history in which other wills, running in oblique or contrasting directions to our own, inevitably hinder or contradict what we most fervently desire. We cannot simply have our way, not even when we believe our way to have the "happiness of mankind" as its promise.

You know after any truly initiating experience that you are part of a much bigger whole. Life is not about you henceforward, but you are about life.

forgiveness always heals; it does not matter whether you are Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic or Jewish. Forgiveness is one of the patterns that is always true, it is part of The Story. There is no specifically Catholic way to feed the hungry or to steward the earth.

If I can recognize that all suffering and crucifixion (divine, planetary, human, animal) is "one body" and will one day be transmuted into the "one body" of cosmic resurrection (Philippians 3:21), I can at least live without going crazy or being permanently depressed.