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 ]

Heartology - the study of the (human) heart

intersecting moment

Many times the place where one's awareness resides is an intersection of heart (feeling or non-verbal awareness and responsiveness) and mind (verbal, sometimes logical or rational and rationalizing) and spirit/soul (something outside of narrow Ego prerogatives). Even though the words are spelled differently and stem from different etymological roots, they sometimes seem to touch a a shared something. Different languages can split analytical hairs and break apart experiences or feelings into named components, but the raw sensation or (re)cognition of something may be a single, monolithic thing, rather than fragmented component facets.

The time of the primitive or early eklesia of Jesus followers involved Greek speakers and Aramaic or Hebrew speakers, among many others. But the traditions of Greek thinkers tended to split things analytically, fracturing and producing insights and knowledge; sometimes also wisdom from that base of knowledge. In modern Japanese the word 'kokoro' combines heart/mind; emotional responses as well as presence of mind. Today in English there is a conceptual split in mind-body, as well as mind-heart. But in the time before these distinctions a person was a unitary presence; all these components were taken as inseparable.

Since so much of a person's spiritual growth is rooted in one's heart, it would seem to be fruitful to develop a science of the heart, or heartology; maybe some characteristics would come from creatures other than human, for that matter, too. A beginning point for any field of knowledge is vocabulary or nomenclature. Free-association for words containing 'heart' or whose meaning is adjacent or implied of heart includes these.

heartful . heartless . encourage . dishearten . hearty . heartful. heartening . heart-breaking . down-hearted  hard-hearted . cold-hearted . warm-hearted - big hearted - black hearted . discourage .  care . careful . uncaring . careless . cordial . haven't got the heart to . sacred heart . precious heart . heart of gold

These words will carry several common threads. One of the common strands is that the person is fully open and present to the other's condition; responsive to the joy or sorrow of the other, somehow joining in or mirroring/echoing that condition. Sometimes there are mixed feelings of misgiving, but hope; trepidation but fortitude, love and hate, respect but dislike, and so on. By looking more deeply at the pool of closely-related, as well as more indirectly-related terms it is possible to collect examples of situation when these are expressed, in addition to digging into the word roots for clues to the ground from which the words have grown across the centuries. Taken all together, the context of usage and of history, the broadest picture emerges of what a soft heart and a hard heart consists of, and of the importance of breaking and healing a heart; of self and others.