A Communion of Subjects

All that is alive is subjective. When I look at life as a collection of inanimate objects, I disempower the moment, I reduce the process of living to navigating an obstacle course. Even if the objects are friends, they carry only a superficial, designated sort of meaning.

For anything to be deep, it has to be alive. For anything to carry relevant meaning, it has to be interactive. For anything to have a soul, both the perceiver and the perceived must contain particles that are of the one particle, the one life, the one soul. Our minds can only go as deep as our world because we are contained within it. One mind, one soul, one particle.

I recognize the many contained in the one and the one contained in the many.

The universe ultimately is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects… It’s the deep mystery, the mystery of the sunset, the deep mystery of the stars at night, the mystery in the song of the birds, the waves of the sea, the mystery of the seagull. All these things carry the deep mystery of the universe.

Thomas Berry, The Soul and the Universe