Our life is not an assemblage of various parts whose coming together is optional or haphazard. Rather, we are bound together in an organic fashion, each of us joined to others through innumerable vascular channels that circulate the nutrients of life. In a plant’s life, no element is insignificant or wasted…. If at any moment one element of the plant, say a particular leaf, tries to extricate itself from the process, it will simply wilt and die. If enough elements fail to contribute, the whole plant dies, along with all of the fruit and flowers it promised the world. The dissolution of love, in other words, leads to the dissolution of life.
Norman Wirzba
The Way of Love: Recovering the Heart of Christianity