Countdown: Day 17

I’ve been on the road and so will catch up today with quotes from my upcoming book that will release on March 15, Naked Spirituality.

Every time you eat, drink, or draw a breath, you are demonstrating that you are not a self-contained unit. Your skin might give you a sense of boundaries, but in reality, you are interconnected not only with others, but with all creation. You are an organism in an environment, vitally connected and utterly dependent on resources outside yourself – elements and minerals; chemical, biological, geological and even astrophysical processes; friends, family, mentors, public servants; ecological, social, political and economic systems. Your story flows from and into a million other stories; it’s hard to know where your story ends and others begin. At a funeral, when the officiant says, ‘From dust you came, and to dust you shall return’, he or she could just as easily have said, ‘From stardust you came, and to stardust you shall return’, because even earth’s dust has a story beyond itself. Ingratitude makes us foolishly forget the fragility of our skin and proudly deny our interdependency and interconnectedness. If true spirituality and authentic religion are about vital interconnectedness, you can see how essential the practice of gratitude must be. (Brian D. McLaren, Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in Twelve Simple Words. HarperOne, 2011, Chapter 7)