I literally learned something new...

I speak in hyperbole. I exaggerate and over emphasize for effect. I adore figurative language, and I live in metaphors. And I yet I thought I had a good grasp of reality. Even thought my mastery of metaphor gave me a leg up on understanding people and the world.

And since my children were young, I've been teaching them that we are part of an interdependent web of life, and I've worked to make sure they know we are all connected on this great big world of ours. And I've felt proud of how I'm intentionally raising tolerant children who are comfortable with diversity and respectful of the earth.  And then recently, I learned something that blew me away. It was as if I had been struck by lightning.

Guess what I learned? We are part of an interdependent web of life. Everything is connected! And not just in some metaphorical way. Literally.

Apparently, everything is made of atoms. And not just any atoms, the same atoms that have always been making things! Aside from meteorites, everything on earth has been recycled out of
the same atoms for 4.5 billion years. The same atoms! How awesome is that? So you could be made of atoms that used to hold Joan of Arc together. Literally. I cannot stress that point enough. And these atoms just keep changing configuration to form new parts of our interdependent web.

I am certain that for some of you, this information is not new. I know this in part from the reaction of my own scientifically minded husband when I asked him to confirm the validity of this information about atoms. I continually present new cause for him to shake his head and sigh... (thankfully love is patient)

So anyway, laugh at me if you must, but even when I said, "we are all connected"  I didn’t mean literally. Except for maybe in the sense of how a weather  or economic event on one side of the world will affect the other. It never occurred to me the same atoms that were once in ancient people are now in me. But they are.

Add this to all the new found information I've been gleaning on my pursuit to join the Global Family Reunion , and I can safely say I have a new sense of belonging to the interdependent web of life. And a new gratitude for everything and everyone that I am connected to- which again- is everything and everyone.

Learning has always been joyful for me, but learning something new that I thought I knew, has been awesome. Literally.  So I'd like to offer up that you take a new look at something you thought you knew. Be open to discovering an entirely new perspective. And then share it with the rest of us. Because our web could use a bit of stretching now and then. So says this one random angel...