Webs of Interconnectedness

I was sitting in a room of unfamiliar faces, in an unfamiliar country. It was that first day of a conference - that day I dread when, for the first time, we all look around the room pretending not to judge and stereotype as we measure one another. In these moments of uncertainty people sought out the comfortable and the familiar as small groups formed around the room: Swahili speaking Africans, Indians, Filipinos, Francophone Africans, Indonesians, Sri Lankans, Eastern Europeans, Americans and the Aussie – all coming together in language groups, simultaneously forming bonds of friendship and barriers of protection.

But, as the conference got underway, and the theme began to unravel, the single purpose that brought this disparate group together in the middle of nowhere Kenya, began to break the barriers, expand the bonds and create a new web of interconnectedness that seemed unlikely but quickly became the comfortable and the normal.

As much as I find the first moments of an event like this uncomfortable, eventually I love being in a varied group of people like this, hearing new stories, understanding issues through a different worldview and learning once again that it is through this diversity and difference that I learn to be more. And at the end of the time I have made new friends, new connections and together we have begun to fulfil our expectations.

Vinoth Ramachandra writes; “The theological understanding of human personhood is that we image God in relationality. Just as God's being is dynamic relationality, so we are constituted as persons through webs of interconnectedness. We become the occasion for each other’s self-fulfilment. Those who love us make us what we become; we only learn love by being loved.”

People are designed to be in relationship, to explore and become enveloped by webs of dynamic interconnectedness. It is by being loved that I become more than I am and that I learn to love others. But that is often messy and sometimes painful, it takes effort and time, it takes intention and perseverance and it often leaves you vulnerable and open to criticism. But, after fighting with it for a long time, (and watching it modelled by someone I love), – I am nevertheless convinced that it remains the only way to be real, to be human, to be!