Today’s Spiritual Revolution
The great chain of being evolved into a great web of belonging. The branches of our family trees are entangled. When we make our way through the thick canopy of the past, we discover that lineage is anything but a line. It looks far more like a web. Our concept of reality shifted to living systems of interrelationship and interdependency knit together in a web of life or the great web of belonging. God’s relationship to creation is one of loving intimacy. Creation is not bound by a divine hierarchical order but is, instead, a circle or dance or tapestry, where God, humanity, and nature participate together in community. Indeed, intimacy between God and the world, an intimacy that is the primary relationship between God and creation from the beginning. God is not mediated through structures; rather, structures provided ways for people to participate in the divine realities that infused the world around them. The shift toward God with us in a great web of belonging is the heart of today’s spiritual revolution. The great web is the woven world of the planet and the people and the God who dwells therein. 1
[Adapted from: Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life; Diana Butler Bass, Grounded]