We live in an era when personal expression has become an every day matter of interest, discussion and media attention. Let’s list a few examples:

• MeToo Movement: Freedom from sexual assault and harassment.
• Reproductive Rights: Women’s rights over their bodies and choices around pregnancy.
• Gender Identity: LGBTQ people rights of expression, and even the rights of children to change their sex.
• Black Lives Matters: Safety from discrimination and freedom from abuse by people with guns and sometimes badges.
• Personal Apparel Protests: The right to dress as one wishes at the center of demonstrations now in Iran where women are abused and imprisoned if they break dress codes.
• Animal Rights: Protection for animals from human abuse, particularly in regard to medical research and hunting.

We shouldn’t forget to add Sovereign Rights which are at stake in Ukraine where that country is fighting to maintain its homeland and borders against invasion.

Thinking about this broad and expanding topic brings to mind a book written many years ago by Machaelle Small Wright. Behaving as if the God in All Life Matter is an excellent book which among other things tries to place humanity into co-creative respect to other kingdoms and the planet as a whole.

We wish to add a few layers to the topic and Ms. Wright’s thinking on the subject. You see, each of us might admit that ALL LIFE MATTERS. In general, we might think and say so. At the same time, many of us may harbor the belief the some life is more significant, valuable than others.

But then, who are we to say one way or the other? What part do we have to play in the creation and re-creation of any life forms?

You might object quickly: “I have mothered (or fathered) children. So, I am a creator in a way.”

We respond by quoting words of the great poet Kahlil Gibran: “Your children are not your children, but the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.” Think about it.

Ultimately, all of us are Matters of the Greater Life in which we live.

So, let’s survey the Bigger Picture – or try to.

• All human lives matter – regardless of sex, color, race, creed, etc. Most certainly.

• Yes, animal lives matter. And not just dogs, cats and horses. The animal kingdom is a part and organ of the whole. Each species plays a part in its kingdom and in the the greater scenario of planetary existence. Choose an animal – and you surely can come up a reason that its life matters.

• Plant lives matter. It is easier to recognize that the presence of plants upon the planet is vital even from a limited science view. (Plant and Planet are quite related even in spelling.) We know, plants provide food, fodder, shelter, etc. They also and probably more importantly take our carbon dioxide and liberate oxygen for us to breathe.

• And that’s not all. Soil, dirt, rocks, ore, stones, metals, etc. support plant and animal life and then the rest of us. But, you might object that minerals are not alive.

But we say, every thing is alive. Motion is considered the basis of life – and the tiniest fleck of dirt is in motion. Electrons race around nuclei in all physical forms at fantastic speeds. That we don’t fully understand the dense-appearing life of earth is quite irrelevant. All things are alive. Every thing lives. The ancients knew this fact, like primitive people in the present time.

Moreover, life is not limited to visible things or beings. Really? Really!

Not all life moves physically bodies, tissues, cells and atoms. There are dimensions beyond scientific capture and measurement in which non-physical things live and move and have their being beyond our general awareness. They have been known for eons, but our materialistic preoccupations distance our thinking and perceptions to a large degree from subtler worlds. That trend will change, someday.

So, there are many, many other lives which can be discussed, though not proven or validated to physical eyes.

• Angels and Devas have vast importance in the broad scheme of life and our earthly lives. Regardless of our limited awareness of the finery of their existence, we will one day recognize the angelic kingdom as our Better Half.

• The Cloud of Witnesses are those who have passed through the human kingdom should also attract our interest and reverence. These beings have crossed through physical experience manifold times, perfected their natures, and advanced into subtle dimensions which require no physical bodies. They, to a greater or lesser degree, run the affairs of Planet Earth.

• Planet Earth and Planets beyond number  fill the universe. Like our own cells do in our bodily frames, they populate the physical form of the Universe. Planet Earth - sometimes called Gaia or Terra - is the Bodily Temple of a living, vital, spirit Being.

We stop here with our enumeration of lives, but to say that the universe is filled with life. Even so-called vacuums contain substantial beings and wonderful lives.

So, dare we repeat All Lives Matter. All Matter is sustained by Lives hidden as well as obvious.

Respect and cooperation is due to every thing in and around us. Let us be reminded regularly to Behave as if the Life in All Things Matters.