Us versus Them restated as "we together"

Early August 2020 the guest on the weekly radio show, "On Being," was the poet Marilyn Nelson, in a rebroadcast of the original 2017 conversation with host Krista Tippett. She compares God seekers who expect to find God and God-at-work somewhere outside themselves ("magic mentality") to the people who see God at work in all places and times, including in their own selves ("alliance mentality").

Image search result for 'Marilyn Nelson poet' (8/2020)

Quoting the interview (full text link appended, below), she says:

I think people who have a “magic mentality” believe that God is something out there that we have to find to connect with and people who have an “alliance mentality” know that God is inside of us and in our connections with each other and with the world, that God exists within and between, not exterior to us, but within us and between us. I think that’s what he was trying to say... There is no separation. We are a part of God. That’s — isn’t that the ecstatic experience? We recognize that. And some people know that just naturally. Other people have to learn it. [emphasis added]

Other authors and thinkers from the Stewards of Earth tradition in Abrahamic religions have said something similar with regard to perceptions in public about "nature" versus society, or  "the natural world" ---as if the definition of "nature" consists of everything apart from human lives. Whereas industrialized, Western societies have cultivated an imaginary separation of human (cultural and technologically mediated) environment from all of the land and waters that people require to live, other societies have viewed the human/non-human boundary as much blurrier and movable. One instance of the "nature" concept being cut-off from human life comes from the translation into Japanese from the English concept of "nature." There was no exact pre-existing Japanese word, so a new one was coined, ShiZen (the kanji character 'shi' means "of itself" and 'zen' means something like "wild vitality").

In the particular phrase, above, "We are a part of God," there is a poetic double-meaning, or perhaps it is best described as ironic reflection. One meaning is "a part" or one of many pieces that all together contributes to the whole. Another meaning, this time a clever pun, is "apart" or separated from the rest. Taking the spoken word and transcribing it as "We are a part of God" means that we cannot be separated from God since we are integral to what and who and why God is. But taking the spoken word and transcribing it as "We are apart of God" means that we stand outside of God's ways and spend our waking hours seeking a way back in.

[from https://onbeing.org/programs/marilyn-nelson-communal-pondering-in-a-noisy-world/#transcript ]

Yardsticks to measure your past life, now, or to sketch what is next

THINKING ABOUT WHAT COUNTS

 There are many ways to shape your life, leaving aside the factors outside of your control like nature (what you are born with) and nurture (how the events and people around you affect things). For example, you can identify some things about influential people in your life or ones you hear about in books, news media and entertainment, or figures from the Bible. Either consciously or in ways you are less aware of, these personalities offer a model or sometimes a pathway to lead you toward the person you become and continue to come to be.

The thirst for meaningfulness (in God's eyes, in peer's eyes, in your own eyes) can be expressed by achievements that are visible or may be intangible and not readily visible to others; kindnesses done for other living things along the road of life, for instance. Dreams or aspirations of one's own or inspired by others may include meaningfulness as the fruit of the efforts as well as costs for that undertaking.

Another major form that people may use to measure success, or its lack, is worldly acumen and rewards produced: the more stuff (or less tangibly, the more experiences) gathered equates the the more achievement. Worldly measures might include consumer victories: satisfaction from bargaining for a good price, avoiding costly monetary liability, freedom from debts, and so on. Or the trophies might fit the bumper sticker, "The person who dies with the most stuff wins."

Doubtless there are many other ways to estimate one's own value among the living, but from the Rabbi Jesus example, perhaps relationships and lives touched by one's efforts - either adding net positive things to those lives, or by lessening the negative parts of those others' lives - are the best yardstick for knowing your measure.

Analytically, the motivators of meaningfulness, material shrewdness, or building relationships of depth and breadth can be discussed independent of each other, but going about one's day or lifetime these all work together, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. And yet, even if it is artificial to separate these from each other, doing so helps to make clear which mindset leads the others at any moment: is your decision based on maximizing utility (homo economicus) and pressing the levers of political economy, or is the main organizing principle for why you are driving your life in a particular direction mainly about meaningfulness, something that resonates as the main point which positions all else in secondary or dependent roles. Or maybe the lens through which you see the world and view your own self, as well, is concerned with quality of relationships, the ways that one person helps another to bridge difficulties, grow into a bigger person, do the right thing, and pay forward or pay back blessings they have known. Of course this same discussion of individual lives can also be broadly projected on the various zeitgeist of a certain generation or century; or indeed upon a whole culture, language, or society - what is primary and what is regarded as secondary in lifetime worth?

No matter which current flows strongest in your life at a given stage, the others will be also be present because even the holiest aspirations and intentionality takes place in a world of gravity, calories, hungers and thirsts. So material circumstances cannot simply be dispensed with. Nor can the deep-rooted desire to express and recognize meaningful words and deeds. As for living and loving relationships, there must necessarily be good days and bad days; not forever frozen and unchanging in tone and texture.

Having a yardstick, or at least being aware of the one you most often turn to, is an important step in assessing, estimating, comparing and discussing earlier situations and also for planning the future use of time and energies that give shape to the life that you now live and the one that you want to live in days to come.