The Great Chain of Being

I have been intrigued with the concept of connectedness for most of 2009. I have always used models of development that have 1-2-3 steps, processes that appear to have a beginning and a logical end. I suggest books that offer such models all the time.

I do believe these models are useful to help organize the process of complex human change.

And I don’t believe it really works that way. What I do believe is that there is a mystery to human interconnectivity that we are never meant to understand, but instead live. One of the best ways I have read it described recently was offered by author Richard Rohr in a daily meditation he adapted from his own work, Hope Against Darkness (p. 135):

“I would like to reclaim an ancient, evolving and very Franciscan metaphor to rightly name the nature of the universe, and to direct our future thinking: the image of the “the Great Chain of Being.” It was a metaphor not of hierarchy but of connection thus the word “chain.” The essential and unbreakable links in the great chain include:

the Divine Creator,

the angels, saints, and ancestors,

the humans,

the animals,

the world of plants, trees, and vegetation,

the waters upon the earth,

the earth itself with its minerals and metals.”

For me, however, the universe outlined in Rohr’s “universe” is missing something. It appears to include all things relating to this earth, but not the infinite galaxies. I don't offer this as critisim. I am truely not that bold. It is more an open observation and question I have. Let me know your thinking.

For those of you lucky enough to live in Las Vegas, Richard Rohr will be holding a day-long event on Saturday, December 5. Call Stillpoint Center for Spiritual Development for more information 702 243 4040.