The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightning and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees, – all these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related.
– Thomas Berry in Evening Thoughts: Reflections on Earth as a Living Community
This beautiful quote stands well on its own, and invites us to explore this for ourselves.
What I find is…. In a conventional sense, based on the universe story from our modern science, we are all parts of the seamless whole of this universe and existence taking the form of everything we see in and around us and in the universe. We are all parts of the same seamless whole. We and everything are local expressions of the universe evolving and exploring itself in always new ways.
As capacity for my world, I also find a seamless whole. All of this – my human self, stars, flowers, birds, animals, the world as it appears to me – happens within and as what I am, within and as this awake space. Here too, it’s all one.
In both cases, the universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, and everything constitutes a community of existence that is profoundly related.