... a process to help clear the debris and noise of our lives as we undergo God. We hope to listen to the extraordinarily peaceful powerful meaning of Love from God who wants to speak to us.
O Consuming Fire, Spirit of Love, come upon me and create in my soul a kind of incarnation of the Word; that I may be another humanity to Him in which He can renew His whole mystery. And You, O Father, bend lovingly over Your poor little creature; cover her with Your shadow, seeing in her only the Beloved in whom You are well pleased. O my Three, my All, my Beatitude, infinite Solitude, Immensity in which I lose myself, I surrender myself to You as your prey. Bury Yourself in me that I may bury myself in You until I depart to contemplate in Your light the abyss of Your greatness.
"Let us live with God as with a friend, let us make our faith a living faith in order to be in communion with Him through everything, for that is what makes us saints. We possess our Heaven within us… The day I understood that everything became clear to me. I would like to whisper this secret to those I love so they too might always cling to God through everything…"
The direction of oneself toward God and toward solitude in him prepares the soul for the acquisition of that peace that helps us in the most distracting, most active external work…. Man’s silence makes room for God’s word. When man is silent, God is heard. And once we listen intently to God we maintain our silence even in the midst of our speech.
“Everything around man makes far less noise than man himself. The echo that magnifies external things in our soul—this is the real uproar.” This is a penetrating truth. We often do an injustice to the external world in blaming it for forcing us into distraction and noise. The longings of our soul, the disorder of our ideas and our thoughts, the diversity of our aims: it is these things that make the tumult inside us. Only our inner spiritual attitude can seal the entrance through which all these stray scraps tumble into our soul. If it is possible to open this door, it is also possible to close it. A voice crying in the wilderness has to announce to the soul, make straight the way of the Lord. In order to practice quiet within oneself, it is necessary to call on the aid of the virtues: patience, which calms the torment of sadness in us; perseverance and constancy, which overcome disquiet and fickleness, the shifting of intentions, plans, and goals from one object to another. Longanimity (or long-suffering) plays its part by controlling the feverish disturbance of work; humility and disinterestedness conquer the desire we feel for attention. Through the latter, our work takes on the subtle quality of a deed maturing in secret, like a flower in the bud until the time comes for it to bloom.
The longing for renown, the proclamation of our own deeds and sometimes even only of our plans, rob us of peace and of real thoroughness in our work, for there is too much for display in them, too much that is done for applause and renown, and too much seeking for immediate payment. The spirit of quiet demands humility and disinterestedness; the spirit of calm, as the fruit of love and justice, brings with it order and concord, and drives out disputes, discord, quarrelsomeness, and division. All of these are the fruit of quiet, poured into the soul.
Saving Mr Banks – Forgiveness ScenePAMELA - You've come to change my mind, haven’t you? To beat me into submission.
WALT - No, I've come because you misjudge me.
PAMELA - How do I misjudge you?
WALT - You look at me and you see some kind of Hollywood King Midas. You think I've built an empire and that I want to use your Mary Poppins as just another brick in my kingdom.
PAMELA - And don't you?
WALT - If that was all it was, would I have pursued a cranky, stubborn dame like you for twenty years? I'd've saved myself an ulcer! No, you expected me to disappoint you and so you made sure I did. You see, I think life disappoints you, Mrs Travers. I think it's done that a lot. Maybe Mary Poppins is the only person in your life who hasn't.
PAMELA - Mary Poppins isn't real.
WALT - Oh, no, no, no, that's not true. She's real as can be to my daughter's and to thousands of other children--adults too. She's been there as a nighttime comfort to a heck of alot of people.
PAMELA - Well, Where is she when I need her? Hm? I open the door to Mary Poppins and who should be standing there but Walt Disney!
WALT - Mrs Travers, I am so sorry. I hoped this would be a magical experience for you, for all of us. But I let you down-- and in doing so, I've broken a twenty year old promise to my girls. I've been wracking my brains, trying to figure out why this has been so hard for you and I--You see, I have my own Mr Banks. Mine you, he had a mustache.
PAMELA - Ah! Not true then that Disney created man in his own image?
WALT - But it is true that you created yourself in someone else's yes?
She doesn't answer.
WALT (CONT'D) - Ever been to Kansas City, Mrs Travers? Do you know Missouri at all?
PAMELA - Can't say I do.
WALT - It's mighty cold there in the winters. Bitter.
WALT (CONT'D - he pours out) - My dad, Elias Disney, he owned a newspaper delivery route there. Thousand papers. Twice daily. Morning and evening edition. Elias, he was a tough businessman. A save-a-penny anywhere you can type of fella so he wouldn't employ any delivery boys, he just used me and my big brother Roy. I was eight years old. Like I said, those winters were harsh and old Elias didn't believe in new shoes until the old ones were worn right through so-- Honestly, Mrs Travers, the snow drifts would be way over my head--
WALT (CONT'D) - We'd push through that snow like it was molasses. And the cold and the wet would be seeping through the shoes and the skin would be peeling from our faces-- and sometimes I'd find myself sunk down in the snow, waking up, cuz I must've passed out for a moment-- I dunno. Then school, too cold to figure out equations and things. And back into the snow so by the time we got home it'd be just getting dark, and every part of you would sting like crazy as it slowly came back to life in the warmth. My mother would feed us dinner and then it'd be time to go out again for the evening edition.
Best be quick Walt, best be quick or poppa's gonna show you the buckle end again boy.
WALT (CONT'D) - Now, I don't tell you all this to make you sad Mrs Travers, I don't. I love my life - it's a miracle. And I loved my daddy, boy I loved him. But, there rare is a day where I don't think of that little boy in the snow and old Elias with his fist and strap and I'm just so tired-- I'm tired of remembering it that way. Aren't you tired Mrs Travers? We all have our tales but don't you want to find a way to finish the story? Let it all go and have a life that isn't dictated by a past?
It's not the children she comes to save. It's their father. It's your father--? Travers Goff.
PAMELA - I don't know what you think you know about me Walter--
WALT - You must've loved and admired him a lot to take his name--
PAMELA - I--
WALT - Mrs. Travers. It's all about him isn't it? All of this. Everything.
Pamela looks at her hands, they're shaking.
WALT (CONT'D) - Forgiveness, Mrs Travers, it's what I learned from your books.
PAMELA - I don't need to forgive my father. He was a wonderful man.
WALT - No, you need to forgive Helen Goff. Life is a harsh sentence to lay down for yourself.
WALT (CONT'D) - Give her to me, Mrs Travers. Trust me with your precious Mary Poppins. I won't disappoint you. I swear that every time a person goes into a movie house - from Leicester to Kansas City, they will see George Banks being saved. They will love him and his kids, they will weep for his cares, and wring their hands when he loses his job. And when he flies that kite, oh! They will rejoice, they will sing. In every movie house, all over the world, in the eyes and the hearts of my kids, and other kids and their mothers and fathers for generations to come, George Banks will be honored. George Banks will be redeemed. George Banks and all he stands for will be saved. Maybe not in life, but in imagination. Because that's what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope, again and again and again. Trust me, Mrs Travers. Let me prove it to you. I give you my word.
My prayer is to always remember with every breath to assimilate the Word within me.
To Hear and Observe the Word
On a human plane some days go better than others. And so once again we experience that in the present moment given to us it doesn’t really matter if the day is going well or not. What does matter instead is how we live our lives, and how that points to love, which alone gives value to everything. God in fact loves those who keep his Word.
Let us keep in mind that neither our successes nor our failures will accompany us to the next life. Were we to even give our bodies to be burned— without love it would have no meaning. Without love neither doing missionary work nor speaking with angels’ tongues, neither doing works of mercy nor giving everything to the poor has value (cf. 1 Cor 13:1-3). We can take with us to heaven only how all this was lived, that is, in accordance with God’s Word through which our love is expressed.
Let us start our day then with confidence, whether there be storms or sunshine. Let us remember that every day has value insofar as we have assimilated the Word within us. Christ will live in us and he will give value to the works we accomplish, whether directly or through our prayers and sufferings. In the end these are the works that will follow us into everlasting life (cf. Rv 14:13). We will realize in awe how the Word of God, the truth, makes us free regardless of external circumstances, of inner trials, and of the influence of the world around us, which attempts to diminish the fullness and beauty of God’s kingdom within us.
Today we celebrate the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi. The saint desired to pray continually, as
1 Thessalonians 5:17 recommends. Let us pray...
Blessed you are, Lord;
show me what you want me to do.
Lord, you have been our refuge
from generation to generation.
Lord, have mercy on me
-- I ask as I have asked before --
heal this soul that has sinned against you.
Teach me to do your will,
for you are my God.
In you is the source of all life;
in you is the light
whereby we shall see light.
Forever show your mercy
to them that have come to know you.
Amen.
(A fragment of the ancient church’s prayer, the Te Deum, specially translated by Fr. A. Hamman, a Dominican friar.)
Words to Ponder
Because he himself assumed his full share in this labor of transformation, along with the humblestand poorest of his fellow men, [St.] Francis [of Assisi] discovered an aspect of God very different from that current among the adherents of ecclesiastical principalities and holy wars. For him, God ceased to be the external, dominating, and Transcendent One, the Lord in a more-or-less feudal dress. To him, God appeared as mysteriously present in our history, bereft of all trappings of power, bound instead to what was weakest and most despised in man’s world. Francis rediscovered God’s humbleness, God’s humanity. Not merely as an object of devotion, but as a new principle on which to reconstruct society. He understood that if one acknowledges the God of the Gospel, then one can no longer be satisfied with just any form of social organization. This acknowledgment is bound to bring about a transformation in human relationships; it involves seeking and bringing into being true brotherhood, a brotherhood that excludes nobody. The God of the Gospel lets himself be seen through other men, where there are no more lords and no more subjects, where no one is kept out. The dawn of true brotherhood is the light in which God is truly found.
Jesus is not a character from the past. He lives, and he walks before us as one who is alive, he calls us to follow him, the living one, and in this way to discover for ourselves too the path of life.
(Like the disciples we are perplexed at the Resurrection and ask) What happened there? What does it mean for us, for the whole world and for me personally? Above all: what happened? Jesus is no longer in the tomb. He is in a totally new life. But how could this happen? What forces were in operation? The crucial point is that this man Jesus was not alone, he was not an "I" closed in upon itself. He was one single reality with the living God, so closely united with him as to form one person with him. He found himself, so to speak, in an embrace with him who is life itself, an embrace not just on the emotional level, but one which included and permeated his being. His own life was not just his own...
The Resurrection was like an explosion of light, an explosion of love which dissolved the hitherto indissoluble compenetration of "dying and becoming". It ushered in a new dimension of being, a new dimension of life in which, in a transformed way, matter too was integrated and through which a new world emerges.
The Resurrection is not a thing of the past, the Resurrection has reached us and seized us. We grasp hold of it, we grasp hold of the risen Lord, and we know that he holds us firmly even when our hands grow weak. We grasp hold of his hand, and thus we also hold on to one another’s hands, and we become one single subject, not just one thing. I, but no longer I: this is the formula of Christian life rooted in Baptism, the formula of the Resurrection within time. I, but no longer I: if we live in this way, we transform the world.
Life comes to us from being loved by him who is Life; it comes to us from living-with and loving-with him. I, but no longer I: this is the way of the Cross, the way that "crosses over" a life simply closed in on the I, thereby opening up the road towards true and lasting joy.
I live yet do not live in me, am waiting as my life goes by, and die because I do not die.
No longer do I live in me, and without God I cannot live; to him or me I cannot give my self, so what can living be? A thousand deaths my agony waiting as my life goes by, dying because I do not die.
This life I live alone I view as robbery of life, and so it is a constant death — with no way out until I live with you. God, hear me, what I say is true: I do not want this life of mine, and die because I do not die.
Being so removed from you I say what kind of life can I have here but death so ugly and severe and worse than any form of pain? I pity me — and yet my fate is that I must keep up this lie, and die because I do not die.
The fish taken out of the sea is not without a consolation: his dying is of brief duration and ultimately brings relief. Yet what convulsive death can be as bad as my pathetic life? The more I live the more I die.
When I begin to feel relief on seeing you in the sacrament, I sink in deeper discontent, deprived of your sweet company. Now everything compels my grief: I want — yet can’t — see you nearby, and die because I do not die.
Although I find my pleasure, Sir, in hope of someday seeing you, I see that I can lose you too, which makes my pain doubly severe, and so I live in darkest fear, and hope, wait as life goes by, dying because I do not die.
Deliver me from death, my God, and give me life; now you have wound a rope about me; harshly bound I ask you to release the cord. See how I die to see you, Lord, and I am shattered where I lie, dying because I do not die.
My death will trigger tears in me, and I shall mourn my life: a day annihilated by the way I fail and sin relentlessly. O Father God, when will it be that I can say without a lie: I live because I do not die?
St. John of the Cross translated by Willis Barnstone found in “Poems of St. John of the Cross”
I know that if I didn't begin each day with the daily meditations from The Magnificat I would be banging around like the pinball in the song Pinball Wizard by The Who.
This year, with my trials and tribulations, the theme of suffering has brought me some solace. I just want to share a few quotes from Élisabeth Leseur.
“Let it be done for you according to your faith”
God, I offer you my spiritual aridity and deprivations. I
offer you the interior sadness, the injuries, the disappointments of my heart,
so much anxiety for the spiritual well-being and the health of those precious
to me, and all the many sufferings of life. I offer you darkness of spirit,
weakness of will, interior sorrow, and burdens. I offer you my physical
distress, this illness that has sadly limited my external life, the discomforts
and exhaustion that my troubles bring right now. I bind these things into a
sheaf, Lord, and come humbly with the shepherds to lay it in the manger.
Little Child, all love, all purity, all tenderness, give me
purity of heart, tenderness, and charity. Accept my afflictions and use them
for the good of others and for your glory. May your blessed hands help me to
carry [my burdens], and may your love and the union of our hearts relieve my
isolation. May it end one day, when, by your grace, you will convert and make
holy those dear persons whom I beg you to make Christians and apostles, O Jesus
Christ, my Lord and my God.
A few more quotes from Servant of God Elisabeth Leseur:
“Look around oneself for proud sufferers in need,” Élisabeth counseled, “find them, and give them the alms of our heart, of our time, and of our tender respect.”
“Suffering is the highest form of action, the highest expression of the wonderful Communion of Saints, and that in suffering one is sure not to make mistakes (as in action, sometimes) — sure to be useful to others and to the great causes that one longs to serve.”
And here is an entry from her diary dated, May 3, 1904, which is typical of her experience of sorrow:
"Has my life known any unhappier time than this?…And yet through all these trials and in spite of the lack of interior joy, there is a deep place that all these waves of sorrow cannot touch….[T]here I can feel how completely one with God I am, and I regain strength and serenity in the heart of Christ. My God, give health and happiness to those I love and give us all true light and charity."
Sometimes the best place to be is in silence and Élisabeth sums it up this way:
“Silence is sometimes an act of energy, and smiling, too.”
Dear Lord, please kindle in my heart the indelible mark of suffering shared by all in the Communion of Saints and help me find union with Your Heart full of tenderness and charity.
The one symbol most often identified with Jesus and his Church is the cross. Today we celebrate The Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The cross is a sign of suffering, a sign of human cruelty at its worst. But by Christ’s love shown in the Paschal Mystery, it has become the sign of triumph and victory, the sign of God, who is love itself. Pope Benedict XVI wrote:
In one respect the cross does have a terrible aspect that we ought not to remove... To see that the purest of men, who was more than a man, was executed in such a grisly way can make us frightened of ourselves. But we also need to be frightened of ourselves and out of our self-complacency. Here, I think, Luther was right when he said that man must first be frightened of himself so that he can then find the right way.
However, the cross doesn't stop at being a horror... because the one who looks down on us from the cross is not a failure, a desperate man, not one of the horrible victims of humanity. For this crucified man says something different from Spartacus and his failed adherents, because, after all, what looks down at us from the cross is a goodness that enables a new beginning in the midst of life's horror. (Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium)
As my friend, Gil Bailie surmises that if you or I were on the cross, looking down at our persecutors, we would have seen ravenous wolves. Jesus looks down and see lost sheep. In this difference of looks we have either the apparent peace we grasp at by expelling our enemies versus the look of Real Truth and Goodness revealed through the grace of His Peace.
Pope Benedict XVI continues:
Peace convicts us of our lies. It brings us out of our comfortable indifference into the struggle and pain of the truth. And it is only thus that true peace can come into being, in place of the apparent peace, beneath which lie the hidden hypocrisy and all kinds of conflict. Truth is worth pain and even conflict. I may not just accept a lie in order to have quiet. For it is not the first duty of a citizen, or of a Christian, to seek quiet; but rather it is that standing fast by what is noble and great, which is what Christ has given us and which can reach as far as suffering, as far as a struggle that ends in martyrdom - and exactly in that way of peace. Christ embodies the great and undiluted loving-kindness of God. He comes to help us bear the load. He does not do this simply by taking away from us the pain of being human; that remains heavy enough. But we are no longer carrying it on our own; he is carrying it with us. Christ has nothing to do with comfort, with banality, yet we find in him that inner calm that comes from knowing that we are being supported by an ultimate kindness and an ultimate security. We see that the entire structure of the message of Jesus is full of tension; it is an enormous challenge. Its nature is such that it always has to do with the Cross. Anyone who is not ready to get burned, who is not at least willing for it to happen, will not come near. But we can always be sure that it is there that we will meet true loving-kindness, which helps us, which accepts us - and which does not merely mean well toward us, but which will in fact ensure that all things go well with us. Quote from: God and the World: A Conversation With Peter Seewald
The following Independence Day meditation is from The Magnificat by Anne Husted Burleigh, author and scholar on John Adams.
"In God’s plan of history—that mysterious drama that unites God’s providential care with our freedom –there are particular moments that reveal with glittering clarity that God is in charge. For Americans, Independence Day marks the anniversary of such a moment.
"Nearly two and a half centuries ago, on July 4, 1776, members of the Continental Congress approved Jefferson’s magnificent Declaration of Independence, proclaiming “these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
"For the first time a nation sprang forth, not simply from the bond of people living together in a place for years, but rather from an idea, the principle of the truth of the human person as sacred and unrepeatable. The Declaration acknowledged our origin as beings made by God, with rights God himself gave us. It is God’s law—his plan—that declares unequivocally that in our creation by the divine hand rests our equal liberty and the rights inherent in us a God’s creatures. Our liberty arises not from us, but from the one who made us.
"Independence Day Honors not our own artificial schemes of liberty and quality but the founding principle of natural law that alone protects who we are: each one of us chosen, loved, and created as free beings by God our Father. No other authority will do: nothing other than divine truth provides proper grounding for ordered liberty. On God’s authority, then, the American founders in 1776, “with a firm reliance on the Protection of divine providence,” ventured forth in the great experiment, mutually pledging “to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.”
By Anne Husted Burleigh
Anne is a long-time writer, among whose books is a biography of one of the American founders, John Adams. She and her husband live in Cincinnati near their children and grandchildren.
"As a priest, and now a bishop, I hear often from many
people searching for God’s direction in their lives. They
wonder, what does God want me to do with my life? How
can I be faithful to God in my day to day decisions? How
can I hear God and be sensitive to his promptings?
We all ask these questions. They are a normal part of the
Christian life. That’s why Brandon Vogt and I recently
devoted a whole episode of our podcast, “The Word on
Fire Show,” to exploring these questions.
Below you’ll find an edited transcript of the show so you
can read it slowly, at your own pace, and reflect on how
God is leading you in your life.
In the end, all discernment boils down to one ultimate
goal: finding the path of greatest love. Let’s seek that path
together."
Listen to Bishop Barron discuss the context of the book HERE!
In the Gospel of John, the personal nature of the act of faith is stressed by the very use of the verb “to believe.” In the Gospel, we encounter the expression “to believe,” which means to lend credence to or hold to be true. For instance, to believe Scripture (Jn 2:22), or Moses, or Christ (Jn 5:46). We also encounter the expression “to believe that,” meaning to be convinced that, or just to believe. For instance, to believe that Jesus is the Holy One of God, that he is the Christ, that the Father has sent him.
But alongside these well-known usages, there is one unknown to profane language yet most dear to the Evangelist, and that is the expression “to believe in,” as in the sentence: Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me (Jn 14:1). Believe here means: have faith in, entrust yourself to the person you believe in, build your own life on that person. It indicates a total and unconditional trust that is to replace all human insecurity. A trust in consequence of which the heart can never again be troubled by anything. Jesus asks the same kind of trust for himself that God asked of his people in the Old Testament.
Believing in the Son of God is something different and more than believing that Jesus is the Son of God…. As regards the former, there are all sorts of degrees and you would never finish progressing through them. In other words, you can always trust more in Christ, by surrendering yourself to him more and more and losing yourself in him, until faith in the Son of God becomes the whole reason for your life. Like Paul, who could say: The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal 2:20).
The vast separation between the good life and the holy life is always far more than we realize. The difference is not evident simply in the exterior activity of life. The generous accomplishments of a good person may outshine the limited works of the holy person. What distinguishes the holy person is the interior quality of a soul seeking God, and this is often not seen so visibly. The good life will always be observable to some degree, but whether or not a life is truly holy can easily be concealed in its essential truth. The most important acts of a holy life take place in secret, within quiet depths of the soul. And these most important acts are the offerings it makes for others. There is no great love of God unless a soul is great in offering itself for others. And this begins in the intensity of its prayer, where God alone sees.
The word holiness ought not to be tossed about too lightly, as though the reality were easily reached. There is a danger that an overworked and casual evocation of holiness as the goal of life reduces the immense challenge of giving all to God to a manageable habit of steady, low-cost generosities. Dorothy Day kept on her bedside table a striking phrase of Dostoevsky that conveys, by contrast, the starker reality of a true offering: “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.” It is precisely the harsh and dreadful nature of sacrificial love that makes such love and the offering that accompanies it most fruitful for the salvation of souls.
A task in prayer that must be repeated with regularity: to search for the deeper solitary region of the heart where a single word spoken in silence has more impact on our soul than hours of replete eloquence taking place at the shallows of life.
~ A Reflection by Father Donald Haggerty, ‘The Contemplative Hunger’
Colossians 3:4 - When Christ, who is your life, appears...
Prayer is to forge us into the likeness of the beloved, and thus it is bringing Christ to life in the believer. This is the mystery of prayer - bringing Christ to life in us, thus bringing Christ’s image of His Father to life in us. This is the Christian idea of centering, as a key ingredient for prayer, which means a focus on Christ to where it draws your whole being into Christ.
Colossians 3:4 - “When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
At some point in my life prayer became, not so much talking to, or reflecting on, meditating, contemplating for achieving union with God..., yes, all these things and more, are part of prayer, but prayer became, Imitatio Christi - the imitation of Christ - a place within where my "I" in the here and now is continually being formed and reformed by God.
Here is beautiful gift on prayer from Sr Ruth Burrows:
"Prayer is not just one function in life, not even the most important function; it is life itself. We are truly alive, truly human, only when our whole life is prayer."
Sister Ruth is a Carmelite nun at Quidenham in Norfolk, England. She is the author of a number of bestselling books.
Interdividual rather than individual best describes human beings and the word points to a term that we may be more familiar with, interconnectedness.
Let’s use the aspen tree for a glimpse into this idea of being interdividual. The leaves of an aspen have an unusual ability to twist and bend to protect the trees from severe winds. Their twisting motion helps the tree to dissipate the energy more uniformly throughout the forest canopy - to reduce the stress on the tree. Additionally, the quaking movement is thought to aid in the tree’s growth, because the constant movement increases the intake of air by the leaves. Lastly, moving the leaves increases the ability for sunlight to shine on the lower leaves, thereby improving the rate of photosynthesis for the trees (that is trees - plural)
But wait, perhaps we should say TREE (interdividaul).
Aspens are unique in that a forest of trees can be actually one tree. Aspens grow in large colonies derived from a single seedling and spread the roots to create new trees. The new saplings may appear as far as 30-40 meters from the parent tree, yet they are a part of the same system. The individual trees may live 40-150 years above the ground but the roots can live for thousands of years. There is one colony in Utah that is believed to be over 80,000 years old! Aspen colonies can even survive forest fires because their roots are so well protected.
And because the colony is actually one system, they are quite generous to what could appear to be ”another tree”. If a tree on one side of the forest is thirsty, the trees will work in unison to pass water through the root system to the ailing tree from one that is in an area where water is more abundant. If another needs nutrients or minerals, again it will be passed through the root system from one tree to the one in need.
One of the most famous of quaking aspens' vast underground root systems is a network called Pando (Latin for "I spread", and also known as the Trembling Giant). It is estimated to cover about 107 acres, weighs about 6,600 tons and dates back 80,000 years - making it a contender to be one of the Earth's oldest and heaviest organisms. Trees within the root system grow and die, but these are replaced with fresh growth. The entire colonial organism, which is said to be derived from a single male plant, contains about 47,000 stems.
Interdividual is a term coined by René Girard and it means, in general that we desire according to the desire of the other and which is often referred to as “mimetic”. There has always been some other who precedes us and which surrounds us, and which moves us to desire, to want and to act. We may acknowledge this when we see it illustrated in the way the entertainment industry creates celebrities, or the advertising profession manages to make particular objects or brands desirable. Just observing yourself in the mob of consumers on Black Friday.
What becomes challenging for us is the claim that in fact it is not some of our desires that are highly mimetic, but the whole way in which we humans are structured by desire.
Girard has pointed out, much like the interconnectedness of the Aspen tree, that humans are those animals in which even basic biological instincts (which of course exist, and are not the same thing as desire) are ever-bond to the other. In fact, our capacity to receive and deal with our instincts is derived from a hugely developed capacity for imitation which sets our species apart from our nearest primate relatives.
As a result, gestures, language and memory are not only things which “we” learn, as though there were an “I” that was doing the learning. Rather it is the case that, through this body being imitatively drawn into the life of all those before us, gesture, language and memory form an “I” that is in fact one of the indications of the "social" other. Thus being highly malleable, it is not the “I” that has desires, it is desire that forms and sustains the “I”. The “I” is something like a snapshot, in time, of all the many relationships which preexist it and which it is a mirror image.
The image laid out here, of the person mimetic, is always reaching outward and inevitably getting caught in entanglements - physically, psychologically and every which way. As we twist and turn in our attempts to free ourselves from another, these very movements become highly contagious for others who often enjoin the swirling of estrangement until escalating into violence. The issue for restoring community is how do we break the spiraling cycle of violent contagion - bringing calm after the chaos? Instead of trying to break free from the other, thinking that is the way to become free, how do we, like the aspen tree, become part of the support system?
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