We Are All Connected.

Years ago my daughter Berta traveled to China occasionally for her work. On one trip she brought home a few souvenirs for me.  A beautiful miniature Mahjongg set since I was just learning the game, and a set of these coasters pictured here in a variety of beautiful colors.  

These coasters are probably 13 years old and yet their colors are as vivid as the day I received them. I like them so much that I take them back and forth with me each summer when I go to Munds Park for three months. They lay perfectly flat and can also serve as a cover to a coffee cup to keep it warm, especially useful in Munds Park where the morning chill can often be in the high 30’s for the entire month of June.

This morning I was doing just that…. using one of the coasters as a lid to my coffee cup. I examined the beautiful stitching more closely and marveled at how intricate it was.  With the Corona virus raging in China now I thought of the hands that made this coaster and wonder if that person is still there.  Is she (I’m assuming it’s a she—and probably bent over a sewing machine rather than hand-stitching) or one of her family members affected by the virus?

Her hands touched this coaster at one point and now here am I, thousands of miles away, touching it also. In fact, I was drinking my coffee in bed while I did my morning readings. How much more intimate could it get?

It made me realize how connected we all are in this big wide world.   Of course that leads me to Disneyland and It’s a Small World After All. Okay, I apologize for putting that song in your head.  I hope it doesn’t twirl around there all day as it will in mine now,  but I do hope I also don’t forget how people we don’t even know often touch our lives.  We are all going about our daily lives so earnestly on this planet that is at once so large, yet so small in the vast universe.  Time to read Ecclesiastes again.