Diversity is Divinity Distributed

For me something so simple and mundane as observing my wife doing a jigsaw puzzle is enough of a divine revelation.

Judy loves Jigsaw puzzles. She would open a puzzle box of a thousand pieces and dump them on the dining table and, each day she would put a few pieces together. Every morning when I come down the stairs, I would look at the puzzle and notice that the picture is incomplete. It would take her weeks to complete the entire puzzle. Without all the pieces in place, the picture is incomplete and incoherent. When all the pieces are in place, the picture is complete and whole.

My experience of God is like that jigsaw puzzle. There are about eight billion pieces of God — humans imprinted with divine image — scattered around planet Earth. Every human being is a piece of God. I also see that divine imprint in varying degrees in animals, plants, and other creatures too.

I ardently believe, vividly experience, and avidly practice the truth that diversity is, divinity distributed, and it has earned me dividends beyond description.

Thomas Aquinas refers to the diversity in creation as the “perfection of the universe.”

“God could not imagine Himself in any single being, so God brought into being an immense variety of beings. Thus, the perfection lacking in one will be supplied by the others.”

In his novel, The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown writes that “God is found in the collection of many…rather than in the One.”

He goes on to explain that the very first passage of the Bible refers to God as a Plural Being: Elohim is the plural of Eloha, the Hebrew word for God.

If all beings are imprinted with the divine image, is it possible that we get a full picture of God only when all His images are acknowledged, accepted, and affirmed?

If we believe that diversity is, divinity distributed, and start celebrating diversity and embracing unity, all traces of racism, sexism, homophobia, and hatred will disappear from our thinking.

Traits like narrow mindedness, fundamentalism, fear of others, and suspicion of strangers will vanish from our minds.

We will start appreciating the fact that there can be more than one correct answer to the same question.

There can be more than one way to reach the same destination; there can be more than one opinion on the same subject.

There can be more than two sexual orientations.

You will get comfortable with the popular saying: “there are more ways to skin a cat.”

(from Cosmic Kindergarten: Earthly Lessons for a Heavenly Life)