The divisions, dichotomies, and dualisms of the world can only be overcome by a unitive consciousness at every level: personal, relational, social, political, cultural, in interreligious dialogue, and particularly in spirituality. This is the unique and central job of healthy religion (re-ligio means “re-ligament”). As Jesus put it in his great final prayer, “I pray that all may be one” (John 17:21). Or, as my favorite Christian mystic, Lady Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) wrote, “By myself I am nothing at all, but in general, I am in the oneing of love. For it is in this oneing that the life of all people exists.”
As dear Julian wrote, “The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another person,” and “In the sight of God, all humans are oned, and one person is all people, and all people are in one person.” This is not some twenty-first-century flabby fabrication. This is not pantheism or New Age optimism. This is the whole point: it was, indeed, supposed to usher in a new age—and still will and can. This is the perennial tradition. Our job is not to discover it, but to retrieve what has been discovered—and enjoyed—again and again, in the mystics and saints of all religions.
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