Everything is linked, writes Pope Francis. Connect, connect, connect! launches Edgar Morin. Interdependence, or “interbeing”, teach the Buddhists. Did we get the message correctly?
It is simple: I am viscerally linked to everything that exists, to the alpine meadow where the herds come to graze, and to the sky where the typhoons rumble; to the garden that I love, and to the lake that is drying up; natural gas extracted from shale, and white wind turbines; to the gazelles that run in the meadows and are devoured by felines, and to the bees that forage; the star group Alpha Centauri, and the invisible Higgs Boson; to all the humans of always and to my very close ones; to the forces of darkness and to the forces of light that constantly pass through me.
Yes, everything that exists is part of what can be called the “original network”, relentlessly emitted from the “womb” of divinity. It gives existence and form to all that is, and sets everything in motion thanks to the sacred energy which emanates from it. We cannot forget the incredible beginning of the Gospel of John: “Originally the Logos; the Logos is towards God, the Logos is God… Everything exists through Him; without Him: nothing! » (John 1, 1-3).
A sweet and joyful conscience
I think of our lives, personal or collective, often incoherent and directed by our poorly controlled affects and desires. Wouldn’t it be time to join the order inscribed in all that coexists and interacts? Order expressed in the Christian tradition by the famous words: “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they abide in You!” » The great Augustine makes sing in him, in his personal music, the biblical passage where the decision of God is written: “Let us make man in our image and according to our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).
The human being thus sees himself connected in a visceral way to the infinite diversity of his traveling companions and to his sacred origin. This does not content itself with “bringing him into the world” through his family line, but points him in the direction.
There is then imprinted in those who know how to listen in depth, a direction and a wisdom for the journey of life, which goes from the divine origin to the divine fulfilment. How not to tremble before this mystery? Despite winds and tides, errors and blockages, it happens to these listeners to open up to the gentle and joyful awareness of their link with the divine infinity and all of Creation. Privileged moments when the man knows who he is and what his path is.
Your heart opens to thanksgiving and blessing
You who read me, you are therefore by nature a powerful center of relationships; since your conception you have been constituted, formed… or deformed, by a multitude of information circulating on these links and reaching you. Starting with those in your family. Some are human and natural: the Orthodox Churches call them divine created energies. It’s about everything that comes to you from your unconscious, from the cosmos and from human beings: influences, encounters, social networks, affections, various passions, violence or fraternity…
It is up to you to discern what is good for you and uplifts you, and what lowers you. So it’s up to you to decide to whom, to what to say yes or no, in order to be a little more yourself.
Some other links are divine: the Orthodox Churches call them uncreated divine energies. They are what provoke, in those who open up to them, an awakening, or a conversion. They are also the ones who sow love, peace, impregnable joy.
If you let yourself be touched day after day by them, you plunge into the powerful and painful breathing of the Universe. Your heart then opens to thanksgiving and blessing. Sometimes, perceiving the pains, sometimes the distresses, of so many beings encountered or evoked, you cannot prevent yourself from praying for or with them. And you then pass on to them, thanks to your mysterious links, this powerful current which emanates from the infinite source.
Benoit Billot is Benedictine, monk in the city at the priory of Étiolles, in Essonne. Adept of zazen, he founded the House of Tobias. He notably published Lights in the ordinary days and the fruitful energy of the sacraments (Mediaspaul).
Benoît Billot: “Human beings are viscerally linked to infinite diversity”