What if we are all one? Connected in ways some folks experience directly, and often. Something that isn’t empathy nor compassion, but are physical threads that are as real as tall buildings, deep canyons, wide rivers and vast corn fields. Threads that are woven into the fabric of our families, communities, country and world.
In theology school, I’m learning these threads can be called the Christ, though they also have other names. I choose to call them Bright Matter, akin to Dark Matter, because nothing makes sense if we don’t acknowledge this unseen and immeasurable substance connecting person to person to person to planet. Threads that span race. Threads that span species and continents. My friend who is a marketing expert calls them ‘the Brand,’ which is a wonderful way to place the threads in a postmodern entrepreneurial context.
As my mind swirls with the news of what is taking place in Washington D.C. the past few weeks and my heart breaks for the impacts on my life, my children and my neighbors, I wonder daily: what if more of us knew how to tap into this experience and feel the threads of our connectedness? Would we see leadership in a new way? Would we see Country in a new way? In 1936, the poet Langston Hughes offered words that remain true today.
O, let America be America again
The land that never has been yet
And yet must be – the land where every man is free.
In 2008, Vincent Harding spoke of this possibility as “the America that has not yet been, trying to be born.” The past week, I kept asking myself, is America not in a time of destruction but birth? How do we birth a nation? I’m certain that it takes some weavers, folks with lived experiences of the threads. And, I think that to experience Bright Matter the threads may first need to be tugged. Pulled hard. Some threads may break. But there are many, so I need to let go of concern for the ones that are breaking and trust that we remain connected.
I notice I want to tuck in. Stay home or immerse myself in the desert and mountain landscapes that surround my community, Durango, Colorado. I notice I want to go places where there aren't people, because it is plants and soil, sky and water who first taught me how to feel the threads. As threads of our nation break, I want to feel the ones that connect me to the Earth and through the Earth to the people doing the tugging. We are one, even as some threads break.
Tucking in is what my relatives did in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, as democracy succumbed to tyranny. In the early 2000s, as I toured a museum in Leipzig, a city in what became East Germany, my uncle Peter told me what it was like to live his life from age 20-60 tucked in, afraid, and cut off from the world as he waited for Germany to be reborn – to become a country committed to never travel the same path again. My ancestors are people who chose to tuck in, then had to stay tucked in.
And because of this, I have been choosing to pay attention and unshield, allowing myself to feel the tugs and be guided. To not tuck in, and instead deepen connections. These are simple actions we can each take, so we can live into the oneness offered by this song from 1985 for global action to relieve famine in Africa:
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true we’ll make a better day …
We who are urban and rural. Black, brown and white. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and nonreligious. We who are farmers, bankers and manufacturers. We who are Republican, Democrat and Independent. We who live in America and who live elsewhere. We who have financial wealth, and we who have a different kind of wealth that often matters more – wealth of belonging, of knowing self, place, ancestry and kinship. At this time of tension, the breaking of threads, and birth of a Nation, I’d like to offer a blessing to America:
May those who have financial wealth and social status receive the true wealth that surrounds us in this country from sea to shining sea. May they know mercy and belong to the land and community. And may we each live into our role to birth what “yet must be.”
Dr. Heidi Steltzer is a scientist, theologian and mystic who recently founded the Center for Earth Theology. Visit heidisteltzer.com for more information. She lives in Durango.
