A reward is something that accrues to someone by accomplishment or recognition. The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on. [Barack Obama] Work is that which you dislike doing but perform for the sake of external rewards. At school, this takes…
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Value for Sunday of Week 44 in the season of Assessing
Having a Sense of Connectedness
Everything is part of the universe. We are in and of this world. Each of us is part of humanity. We have loved ones, friends, and family.
- No man is an island, Entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. . . . Any man’s death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. [John Donne, “No Man Is an Island”]
- A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind. [Albert Einstein, more or less]
- You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have the right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. [Max Ehrmann, Desiderata]
- Jane Crofut, the Crofut farm, Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, United States of America . . . continent of North America, the Western Hemisphere, the world, the solar system, the universe, the mind of God. [Thornton Wilder, “Our Town“, Act I.]
It is mostly true: each of us is a child of the universe, products of natural forces. We are real. Our lives are real. Each life is a product of that reality.
Research on the subject dispels any notions that a healthy sense of connectedness must be other-worldly. A scholarly paper based on a review of 97 salient studies reported that connectedness – defined as “Sense that one has satisfying relationships with others, believing that one is cared for, loved, esteemed, and valued, and providing friendship or support to others” – was the most frequently mentioned mental wellness concept.
Connectedness as an aspect of spirituality has received substantial attention from researchers and scholars. The examples below may seem to be about mundane, everyday relationships; a spiritual attitude brings them into the realm of spirituality.
Social connectedness:
- Social connectedness has been found to play a significant positive role in well-being, according to studies on ageing populations with HIV in Kenya.
- In a study of adolescents: “Social connectedness (ie., family connectedness, school connectedness, social support), self-esteem, and prosocial behaviors were the most common protective factors to social isolation.”
- “Evidence from the United States show that school and family connectedness in adolescence conferred protection against multiple health risks later in life such as sexual risk behaviors, violence perpetration and victimization, substance abuse, emotional distress, and suicidal ideation . . .”
- Researchers who conducted a study of family challenges in the difficult Russian social environment advise family connectedness as a coping strategy.
- A study of people who lost loved ones due to Huntington’s disease found that they suffered from the loss.
Other studies focus on connectedness with nature.
- Native Arctic foods have been identified as a means toward “connectedness to the land and water”.
- A study of indigenous peoples in Oceana identified connectedness to land as a factor in well-being..
- A study identified visits to green space as healthy places fostering a sense of connectedness in Singapore.
Still others focus explicitly on connectedness as an aspect of spirituality.
- Professionals working with children have found that spirituality “as a core part of occupational therapy models . . . can enhance connectedness and belonging and provide meaning to occupations.”
- Another study of adolescents revealed: “High and steady spiritual connectedness was associated with greater use of reframing and avoidant coping for both early and middle adolescents . . .”
- During the COVID-19 pandemic, a study on meditation and spirituality revealed: “The experience of ‘connectedness’, or deep communion, generated by a serious spiritual experience indicates what many have already showed: a way out of the profound crisis we are living through is possible only if we go through it together.”
- A study of substance abuse addicts revealed: “Drumming alleviates self-centeredness, isolation, and alienation, creating a sense of connectedness with self and others. Drumming provides a secular approach to accessing a higher power and applying spiritual perspectives.”
Researchers and scholars have attempted to measure connectedness and its effects.
- A “Spiritual Attitude and Involvement List (SAIL) (has been) developed to measure a sense of connectedness to oneself, the environment and the transcendent as a universal experience.”
- A Cultural Consciousness Connectedness Scale for First Nation indigenous peoples “is centered around the dimensions of identity, traditions, and spirituality”.
- Spirituality Instrument 27 is a “five-factor solution (for people with chronic illness) with 27 items: Connectedness with Others, Self-Transcendence, Self-Cognisance, Conservationism, and Connectedness with a Higher Power. ”
- The World Health Organization has developed a “Quality of Life Spirituality, Religiousness and Personal Beliefs Instrument”, which emphasizes connectedness and other issues.
- “The Watts Connectedness Scale is a tool to help those who have undergone a psychedelic experience articulate and quantify feelings of connectedness post-experience.” (Here is a link to the model; here is a link to Dr. Watts’ explanatory paper.)
- Digital storytelling is being used as a means of fostering a sense of social connectedness through reminiscence in older adults.
- A spiritual connection questionnaire has been developed.
Having a sense of connectedness is a way of looking at things, not a statement of fact, except in a limited sense. It is “the religious attitude of the soul”.
We are not here by right but there is no reason why we should not be here. In this, we are no less than the trees and the stars. There is no reason for any of us to be ashamed of our lives, or to think ourselves unworthy of Being.
The universe is unfolding as it will. The Sun that heats and lights our Earth has been burning for a long time, and probably will continue to burn long after we are gone.
We are human beings, living on Earth in the twenty-first century on the Gregorian calendar. We are extraordinarily lucky to be alive at all, let alone to live a life that allows us access to vast amounts of information over the internet. None of that would be possible without the Earth and everything in it, within our solar system, within our Milky Way galaxy, within the universe, within space-time. However it may sound, it is all true.
To live like this is to recognize our connection within all the things that made us possible, with gratitude to no one and nothing in particular, yet to everything. This is a core part of spirituality. We are all in this together.
Real
True Narratives
Book narratives:
- Alan Lightman, Searching for Stars On an Island in Maine (Pantheon Books, 2018): “Does a scientific understanding of the world erase its emotional impact or spiritual power? Of course not. Science and spirituality are complementary, not conflicting.”
- Helen Macdonald, H Is for Hawk (Grove Press, 2015): “ . . . Helen Macdonald renders an indelible impression of a raptor’s fierce essence — and her own — with words that mimic feathers, so impossibly pretty we don’t notice their astonishing engineering.”
- Harry Dodge, My Meteorite, Or, Without the Random There Can Be No New Thing (Penguin, 2020): “He fits every facet of his life into a larger pattern, each incident becoming an occasion for thinking about interconnectedness.”
Technical and Analytical Readings
Thich Nhat Hanh, Interbeing: The 14 Mindfulness Trainings of Engaged Buddhism (Parallax Press, 4th Edition, 2020).
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
- Seymour: An Introduction: a film on the life and work of pianist Seymour Bernstein, for whom music was the gateway to everything
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
. . . the higher emotions, the moral feelings, even the subtle unselfishness of love, are evolved from the elemental desires and fears of the simple animal: they are the harness in which man's mental freedom goes. And it may be that as death overshadows us, as our possibility of acting diminishes, this complex growth of balanced impulse, propensity and aversion, whose interplay inspires our acts, goes with it. Leaving what? [H.G. Wells, “Under the Knife” (1896).]
Novels and stories:
- Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin: A Novel (Random House, 2009): a novel that elevates Philippe Petit’s grandiose stunt in 1974, when he walked on a tightrope between the then-twin towers of the world trade center, to a metaphor that connects the larger stories of several people associated with the incident directly or tangentially.
- Colum McCann, TransAtlantic: A Novel (Random House, 2013): the author uses air travel across the Atlantic Ocean just after World War I as a metaphor to bind several lives together.
- Richard Powers, The Overstory: A Novel (W.W. Norton & Company, 2018): “The Heroes of This Novel Are Centuries Old and 300 Feet Tall”
- Pitchaya Sudbanthad, Bangkok Wakes To Rain: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2019): “. . . multiple generations all connected, it turns out, to a single house built by the great-great-grandfather of Sammy, a photographer with a penchant for leaving when things get uncomfortable. In rough chronological order, the Bangkok home is linked to an American missionary doctor, a divorced socialite, a construction worker hopped up on brightly colored pills, a student who survived an earlier political massacre, a troubled plastic surgeon and the young owner of one of the faces he carves.”
- Katy Simpson Smith, The Everlasting: A Novel (Harper, 2020): “How much do we owe to those we love? To ourselves? What does it mean to lead a good life?”
- Jim Lewis, Ghosts of New York: A Novel (West Virginia University Press, 2021): “We are all connected in our disconnection, our solitude, our heartache, our longing.”
- Keith Ridgway, A Shock: A Novel (Picador, 2021): “A Novel Follows Intersecting Lives on London’s Margins”.
- Patricia Engel: The Faraway World: Stories (Avid Reader Press, 2023): “The characters . . . seek connection in a disconnected world. Patricia Engel provides it in her own clever way.”
Poetry
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
[John Donne, “No Man Is an Island”]
Other poems:
- Robert Frost, “The Tuft of Flowers” (analysis)
- Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, “A Walk By Moonlight”
- Nikki Giovanni, “Winter Poem”
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Johann Sebastian Bach composed two series of preludes and fugues, Das wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-Tempered Clavier), BWV 846-893 (1722) (list of recorded performances) [Book I, BWV 846-869 (approx. 105-120’) (list of recorded performances); Book II, BWV 870-893 (approx. 120-150’) (list of recorded performances)],, each set consisting of a prelude and fugue in each key of the twelve-tone scale, major and minor. This musical tour de force is among the purest examples of musicality in the history of composition. In it, Bach seems to have touched on every aspect of the human condition. That is the intuitive feel of the work, taken as a whole. Exploring the history behind the composition reveals why. Bach was a devout Lutheran, who aspired to write music that was reverential - about more than himself. Furthermore, “the preludes stand in close spiritual relationship to the fugues . . .” As a matter of musical mechanics and theory, The Well-Tempered Clavier expresses music’s grounding in mathematics. In order to compose a prelude-and-fugue set for each of the twenty-four musical keys, Bach had to invent a tuning system that made the music coherent and listenable in each of the keys. Bach drew a set of loops above the title of the work; musicologists surmise that he was expressing his idea of a new tuning system, as reflected in the title. In so doing, he expressed music’s connection to the grand order of mathematics. Top performances on harpsichord are by Walcha in 1973, Leonhardt in 1973, Moroney in 1988, Wilson in 1989 (Book I), Verlet in 1992-1993 (Book I, Book II), Levin in 2000, Suzuki in 1997 and 2008 (Book I, Book II), Frisch in 2015 and 2019 (Book I, Book II), and Rousset in 2016. Top performances on piano include Edwin Fischer in 1933-1936, Feinberg in 1958-1961 (Book I, Book II), Gould in 1963, Richter in 1970-1973, Nikolayeva in 1971-1973, Tureck in 1975-1976 (Book I, Book II), Schiff in 1983 (Book I, Book II), Hewitt in 1998, Horszowski in 2003 (Book I), Pobłocka in 2018 and 2022 (Book I, Book II), Pilsan in 2021 and 2025 (Book I, Book II), and Nosrati in 2022 (Book I). Here are some books about this music:
- David Ledbetter, Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier: The 48 Preludes and Fugues (Yale University Press, 2002).
- Marjorie Wornell Engels, Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier: An Exploration of the 48 Preludes and Fugues (McFarland & Company, 2006).
- Siglind Bruhn, Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier: An In-Depth Analysis and Interpretation, Volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4 (Mainer International, Ltd., 1993).
I am biased toward Joanne Shenandoah's “Orenda” album (1998) (48’), having first heard it on the most memorable and magical vacation of my life. Katie and Matthew were ten and nine years old that summer, when we spent two weeks together in Yellowstone National Park. By chance, we picked up this album at one of the in-park stores, and although we had other excellent selections from the same store, this one served as our backdrop of choice throughout the trip. If you close your eyes and imagine being in the heart of nature with the people you love most, perhaps you will understand what I mean.
“Onipa” means “human”. The message of the Ghanan musical troupe by that name is one of connection through collaboration. Here is a link to their releases.
Other albums:
- Katy Guillen & The Girls, “Remember What You Knew Before” (2018) (40’): “. . . singer-guitarist Katy Guillen is possessed of an uncommonly warm delivery and a strong sense of connectedness.” [Frank John Hadley, Downbeat magazine, June 2018 issue, p. 70.]
- Kyungso Park, “The Most Beautiful Connection” (2015) (50’)
- Trio Casals, “Moto Finale” (2021) (56’) consists of works “inspired by nature, loss, spiritual connection, and music of the past. . . . Trauma and chaos mingle with tranquility, nostalgia, melancholy, and hope, painting a broad emotional landscape.”
- Paul Horn & Steven Halpern, “Connections” (1983) (49’)
- Mario Lucio, “Migrants” (2022) (41’): “. . . his Creole poetry is a plea for us to recognize our common humanity”.
- Ensemble Gamut!, “RE” (2022) (63’) and “UT” (2020) (43’): The group “is a fresh, experimental collective of early music and folk music specialists, who are constantly searching for new ways to perform early music. They combine historical instruments and electronics in an innovative way, and have created their own unique world of sounds using medieval and renaissance music, Finnish folk tunes, improvisation and modern soundscapes.”
- Jos Milton & Melinda Coffey Armstead, “As One” (2022) (64’) explores “the human connection to the earth”.
- Severin von Eckardstein, “Vers la Flamme” (2023) (85’) is “an exercise in interconnectedness . . .”
- Jihye Lee Orchestra, “Infinite Connections” (2024) (63’): “There is an endearing earnestness to Lee's approach, as she finds inspiration in huge questions surrounding grief, community, belief, and the will to fight through life's challenges.”
- Donald W.G. Lindsay, “Two Boats Under the Moon” (2025) (90’)
Music: songs and other short pieces
- U.S.A. for Africa, “We Are the World” (lyrics)
- Steve Winwood, “Higher Love” (lyrics)
Visual Arts
Kahlo's "Love Embrace . . ." captures spiritual connectedness brilliantly in its incorporation of "everything" into the painting. If the only the people in the painting looked as though they were "in the spirit," the painting would be perfect for this subject.
Frederic Edwin Church was an American landscape painter whose works evoke a spiritual sense of nature.
- Frederic Edwin Church, Rainy Season in the Tropics (1866)
- Frederic Edwin Church, Heart of the Andes (1859)
- Frederic Edwin Church, Scene on the Magdalena (1854)
- Frederic Edwin Church, Tamaca Palms (1854)
- Frederic Edwin Church, Mount Ktaadn (1853)
- Frederic Edwin Church, Ira Mountain, Vermont (1850)
- Frederic Edwin Church, New England Landscape (1849)
Film and Stage
- Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times): a film of images suggesting the interconnectedness of all things
