In the epistle of James for today, we find him quoting, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” not from Jesus as we might expect, but from the Torah (Lev.19:18). In noticing that, all of a sudden, it occurred to me that God has been trying to get this across to us for thousands of years, and we still haven’t realized its profound import. Immediately, I knew that I had to share my story of how God has recently been expanding my understanding of what “love your neighbor” means for me. With the space available, however, you only get the highlights of how God uses synchronicity, meaningful coincidence, to open my eyes to the depth of God’s word for me.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in a group discussing an article by a feminist theologian in which she quoted Rosemary Reuther describing Jesus’ model of community as one in which “orders of domination and subjugation are replaced by a community of brothers and sisters related to each other in mutual service.” That image somehow spoke to me on a deep level. The next day I was reading some articles on the Internet by Montague Ullman, a well-known authority on dream groups, and I came across an essay in which he seemed to echo Reuther’s vision. He says, “We are in need of a politics of connectedness, one that will work toward matching our biological unity as a species with a cultural reality of community and brotherhood.” Next came David Bohm, a quantum physicist, whose work led him to a similar spiritual understanding as the two above. His biographers say, “It was his hope that one day people would come to recognize the essential interrelatedness of all things and would join together to build a more holistic and harmonious world . . . He envisioned a transformation . . . : a world of interconnection and interdependence . . . in which we have learned to harness the energies of compassion.” Are you beginning to see the thread here? It took me a bit longer to catch on. A couple of days later, I was reading the gospel for the day, Mk.12:28-34, in which Jesus, also quoting from the Torah, points out to his questioner that “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Those words leapt off the page at me, and I realized that not only was “love your neighbor” the message that I had been getting all week from all the sources that had come my way but that neighbor includes all creation, not just the person next door or even the Good Samaritan, but the whole world. “This fragile earth, our island home” with all its inhabitants is my neighbor, your neighbor, and we are all called to join in that interrelated community of God’s love.