The many and the one
Let the cantor go up, then, but let that man sing from the heart of everyone of you, and let each person be that man. For although you all say that, because all of you are one in Christ, it is the one man who is saying it. He doesn’t say, “To you, O Lord, we have lifted up our eyes,” but “To you, O Lord, I have lifted up my eyes.” You should consider that it is each of you who is saying that, but the one chiefly speaking is that single man who is spread throughout the whole round world. That one man is speaking who says elsewhere, “To you have I cried from the ends of the earth when my heart was in anguish” (Ps 60:3). Who is it who is crying from the ends of the earth? Who is that man spread out to the ends of the earth? An individual person can cry out in his own region, but from the ends of the earth? But the inheritance of Christ of which it was said, “I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession” (Ps 2:8), it is she who cries out and says, “From the ends of the earth I have cried to you, when my heart was in anguish.” [Augustine, In Ps 122, 1-2; PL 37: 1630-31]
Beautiful! True!
In Oregon there are some mushrooms that look like many mushrooms spread over thousands of acres, but actually they form a single organism. Each mushroom looks like one plant, but in reality they are all one.
http://www.extremescience.com/zoom/index.php/largest-living-thing
Clare: I recall reading about such an organism, thought to be the largest living organism in the world. Another image, this one more diachronic: A friend received an African violet from her father a few weeks before he was killed in a car accident some forty-five years ago. She carefully nurtured the plant and now and then would take cuttings from it, plant them, and either keep them for herself or give them to nieces and nephews. So it’s the same plant, her father’s last gift to her, still living. Louis Bouyer compared the initial propagation of the Church from the Pentecost community in Jerusalem as occurring by cutting and planting. The same DNA runs through the organism that is the Church today.