“The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.”

~~ Father Thomas Berry ~~

My senses are welcomed to an atmosphere of hushed tones.

In a small vestibule, my fee is paid and I’m quietly ushered into the large sanctuary filled with soft music.

Hung floor to ceiling, are 100+ gossamer thin panels of sheer fabric, each one painted with an image representing an individual single being of life.  Here a flower, there a mountain, a squirrel, a snowflake, a woman, a deer, a single-celled being, all gently swaying to the slightest breeze made by people quietly moving between the panels. 

It takes my breath away, this invocation of multitudes, gently wafting ever so slightly in relation to one another. My heart swells with tears of joy that here, in material form, is a depiction of how I see the world; and, glory be, others see it that way too!

It’s not often we get to see our worldview displayed in material form, but that’s what happened for me when I attended a fabric art installation here in Victoria called All Beings Confluence.  This is a community-based, interactive project designed to show the interrelationships between multitudes of beings who, together, comprise our astounding world.  It was held at Cordova Bay United Church in April of 2016.

Why did this depiction move me so?

The constellation of beings offers a somatic experience of Truth at the core of my being.  That is, a view of the world in which everything is interdependent with, and related to, everything, moving and shifting in co-creation through time and space.  I was seeing it in material form for the first time, but have known it my entire life – and now am called to act in alignment with that Truth.

Describing our own worldview is a tricky thing, much like asking fish to describe the water they swim in.  A worldview gets buried beneath values and beliefs accreted over time by family, culture and societal pressures that bear upon the human condition.  Those pressures accumulate like sediment over fossilized matter.  And, like an archaeological dig, specific tools are required for the task of carefully sweeping away what lies on the surface without having the whole project cave in on itself.

Worldview excavation, like an archaeological dig, requires specialized tools that carefully move aside the top layers of culturally defined sediment. There is gold beneath – and an invitation to recall who we are in relation to the mutlitude of species with whom we co-habit the Earth.

For me, it’s a work in progress as I sift, sort and deeply listen to myself and all in wider Nature.

Master Thich Nhat Hanh honed this profound awareness of interrelatedness between all life with his conception of interbeing.