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Music: “In the Name of All that Is” by Jan Novotka
I’d like to begin with a story:
“In
the ancient days, when the first quiver of speech came to my lips, I
ascended the holy mountain and spoke unto God saying, ‘Master, I am
thy slave. Thy hidden will is my law and I shall obey Thee for
evermore.’
But God made no answer and like a mighty tempest passed away.
And
after a thousand years I ascended the holy mountain and again spoke
unto God, saying, “Creator, I am Thy creation. Out of clay hast thou
fashioned me and to thee I owe mine all.”
And God made no answer, but like a thousand swift wings passed away.
And
after a thousand years I climbed the holy mountain and spoke unto God
again, saying, “Father, I am thy son. In pity and love thou hast given
me birth and through love and worship I shall inherit thy kingdom.”
And God made no answer, and like the mist that veils the distant hills passed away.
And
after a thousand years, I climbed the sacred mountain and again spoke
unto God, saying, “My God, my aim and my fulfillment; I am Thy
yesterday and thou art my tomorrow. I am thy root in the earth and
thou art my flower in the sky, and together we grow before the face of
the sun.”
Then God leaned over me and in my ears
whispered words of sweetness, and even as the sea that enfoldeth a
brook that runneth down to her, God enfolded me.
And when I descended to the valleys and the plains God was there also.”
From Inscape: God at the Heart of Matter, George Maloney, SJ
In
a conference at Amiens in 1841, St Madeleine Sophie, in speaking of
prayer, contemplation, virtue and what is expected of those who claim
the Sacred Heart of Jesus, said this:
The way of ways, the way Par Excellence, is interior spirit,
that spirit that gives life and fruitfulness to everything. It is
interior spirit that makes us another Jesus Christ. . . This
interior spirit must be the breath of our soul, the soul of our soul.
That Spirit that gives life
That Spirit that makes us another Jesus Christ
That Spirit that must be the breath of our soul
Listen carefully; repeat the words slowly, over and over.
What are we saying?
That the Holy Spirit makes us another Christ.
That the Holy Spirit wants to take us over completely,
to transform us into the very Person of Jesus the Christ.
Real
prayer accomplishes this, wipes away all those parts of us that would
resist, that would cling to selfishness, that are, as Thomas Keating
says, our false self. All in us is being transformed into the Christ.
“There
is only Christ: he is everything and he is in everything.” We hear from
Paul in Colossians 3:11. We have perhaps heard this a thousand times.
What does it mean? Do you claim that truth? Can you say that you are,
or that you are becoming the Christ? After all we eat the Body of
Christ and we become what we eat. Our Amen affirms that we are the
Body of Christ. Our Amen claims this.
There is another story I would like to tell you, a true story. During the Second
World
war, during the bombing of Germany, a Catholic Church was hit. When the
fires died down the pastor and his parishioners went to the Church to
find what was left. They were concerned about many things but
especially the crucifix that hung over the main altar, which was of the
triumphant Christ. Much to their amazement they discovered that the
full cross was intact, and the corpus of the Christ with his crown and
all, all that is, except the arms. They undertook a great dialogue
about whom they should hire to replace the arms, and then they
decided, “No,” they wouldn’t replace the arms. THEY were the arms of
the Christ and it would be a stark reminder to them of the fact that
they are the Body of Christ. What an enormous reality this is! We can
hardly take it in:
I am the Body of Christ?
I am being transformed into Jesus the Christ?
I am loved as Christ was loved?
I am to do the work of Christ? To take my part – whatever that is
-- in the redemption of the world?
I am to love as Christ loves? I am to love with Christ’s love?
I am to manifest the love of the Heart of Christ to the world?
That
is an impossible task for us. Impossible for us but not for the
Christ. When we allow the Christ to live in us, then it is that we make
known the love of God to the world, this world that is so in need of
knowing God’s love. That is what we do ONLY when we allow the Christ
to live in us. For “of ourselves we can do nothing.”
And Paul says: “Now I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” These are not mere words; this is reality.
So what has this to do with the emerging universe? EVERYTHING!
The
writer of the Upanishad has this to say: “the little space within the
heart is as great as the universe. The heavens and earth are there,
the sun, the moon, the stars, fire and lightening and winds, for the
whole universe is in God and God dwells within our heart.”
In
this age of the new cosmology when scientists are showing us how
nterconnected all created being really is, how dependent upon the earth
we are, we know the wisdom of these words, and these of Hildegard, a
most remarkable woman of the 12th century:
God has arranged all things in the world
In consideration of everything else.
We
are not alone! We are not isolated beings, anonymous beings in an
alien, hostile world; we are part of the universe, we carry in our very
bodies the stuff of the stars as Brian Swimme says, and thus our prayer
rises from the earth itself, from the universe, from the Incarnate
Christ. Our joys and our sufferings are the joys and the sufferings of
the universe. The joys and the sufferings of the beings on the earth
are ours as well. Our lives have cosmic dimensions, whether we know it
or not.
Music: “May All I Do Today” by Jan Novotka
Since
you are one with the universe, since you are OF the universe, and more
than that since you are the Christ, everything you do affects the whole
world, the universe. Every act of love affects Iraq.
John of the Cross knew this:
A
little of this pure love is more precious to God. . . and of more
benefit to the Church, even though it seems to be doing nothing, than
all those other works put together. (C.29.2)
And
Iain Matthew goes on: “John learned that from Jesus. And Jesus taught
him the nature of that love. That “pure love” may bring radiant
elation. On the other hand it may feel as rough as a splintered cross-
beam. It may come as dryness, darkness, the over-exacting demand not to
renege on one’s integrity. If it does, John says, know that you are
not alone, and that you are helping to save the world.” (The Impact of God, Iain Matthew, p. 131)
Matthew
Fox in a recent book said this; “What did the universe have in mind in
spending fourteen billion years of work to bring me (you). . .to be
here? Now? “ (Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet, p. 22)
Or
perhaps we can put it this way: What does God have in mind, in having
the universe spend 14 billion years of work to bring you to be here in
this place now?
One of the fundamental laws of the universe is to know who, in fact, we are. This is,
according to Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, the law of interiority.
For
instance, a tree is a tree. Trees are special. From the moment it
sprouts until the day it dies a tree stays fixed in the same spot. Its
roots are nearer than anything else to the heart of the earth, and it’s
crown is nearer to the sky. Sap courses through it from top to bottom,
from bottom to top. It expands and contracts according to the
daylight. It waits for rain, it waits for sun, it waits for one season
and then another. It waits for death. Not one of the things that
enables it to live depends on its will. It exists and that’s all. And
because IT exists, WE can breath, and so we have life. Even a dead
tree, a fallen tree gives life. It has been suggested by one ecologist
that if you don’t believe in life after death, look closer someday at a
dead tree lying on a forest floor. Chances are that it is teaming with
life – maybe more than when it was standing erect. It is often more
valuable to its forest dead than alive.
We are connected to trees. We couldn’t live without them.
And
what about rocks? A rock is a rock. A rock contains within itself the
whole history of the universe. A rock is that from which all things
have come – not just the continents and the mountains, but the trees
and the oceans and our bodies. Rocks have been in existence for
millions of years living through the cycles of the planet’s birth,
decay, rebirth. Rocks know the building up, the breaking down, the
fusion, the fragmentation, the mending and the letting go of the 14
billion years of the life of our universe. The rocks remember. But for
the rocks, we would not be here.
So, who are
you? What did the universe have in mind in spending 14 billion years
of work to bring you to be here now? What are you to the universe?
How is the universe gifted by your presence?
Meister Eckhart, the 13th century mystic answers:
God’s being is my being
And God’s primordial being
Is my primordial being.
Wherever I am, there is God.
And again: The seed of God is in us.
Now the seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree;
And a hazel seed grows into a hazel tree;
A seed of God grows into God.
Or perhaps this might help:
We ought to understand God equally in all things,
For God is equally in all things.
All creatures are interdependent.
These are not just the words of a 13th century mystic, but rather the expression of what we now know to be true. But poets and mystics have known this for some time.
Earth is crammed with Heaven
And every common bush
On fire with God.
But only he who sees
Takes off his shoes.
The rest sit around
And pluck blackberries.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
I am the dust in the sunlight, I am the ball of the sun. . .
I am the mist of morning, the breath of evening. . .
I am the spark in the stone, the gleam of gold in the metal. . .
The rose and the nightingale, drunk with its fragrance.
I am the chain of being, the circle of the spheres,
The scale of creation, the rise and the fall.
I am what is and is not. . .
I am the soul in all.
Rumi (1207-1273)
What I know of the Divine
I learnt in the wood and fields.
I have no other masters
Other than the beeches and the oaks.
St Bernard (1090-1153)
All things by immortal power
Near and far
Hiddenly
To each other linked are,
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling a star.
Francis Thompson (1859-1907)
What
the poets and mystics knew, we are beginning to believe. The “new
universe” story, explained by theologians and scientists alike, is
challenging us to open our minds, to listen with new sensitivity to one
another and to the earth, to open our eyes to beauty and to suffering,
and thus, to make choices about how I view myself and the world in
which I live.
As you know the physicists of today
are carefully explaining how all that is was originally contained in
the matter of the Big Bang. They talk about an EMERGING UNIVERSE, one
growing over time, unfolding over about 14 billion years. No longer
are they speaking about a universe created at the beginning of time,
created by God out of nothing and all at once. The word “created”
stresses the transcendence of God as well as the continuing presence of
God; it implies a God who creates and produces the creation from the
outside as the efficient cause of everything. This God rules the world
through a plan called “Divine Providence” and creatures are secondary
causes in carrying out God’s plan. Here is implied a certain
separation between God and the created world.
As
Thomas Berry, the theologian says: “God is not constantly running the
show as though the universe were made up of puppets. It is not a puppet
show; it is a reality, functioning from within its own spontaneity.”
Now,
when we speak of an EMERGING UNIVERSE we are describing a process in
which the whole universe is emerging in a time-development sequence
from within. This kind of language stresses the immanence of God; it
implies a God who acts from the inside out with internal causality.
There is an immediate internal presence of the power, energy, and love
of God as the source of all things.
In Matt Fox’s
words: At these times we are asking truths about who we are and what
our purpose is for being here. We are no longer taking our existence
for granted – nor are we taking our ancestors for granted. These
ancestors, we are learning, include the original fireball, the hydrogen
and helium atoms that it gave birth to, the galaxies that birthed the
supernovas that birthed the stars that birthed the earth that birthed
the waters and the continents and the plants and the animals and the
ozone and the sun and the moon and the seeds and the trees and the
flowers – all of which were necessary for our presence to occur.
(Creativity p.22)
Another thing we need to
recognize if we are to know ourselves, is that we are intimately
connected with all that it. That I am already part of a vast
community. That statement: no man is an island -- is more true than
the writer realized, than anyone realized. We are beginning to realize
now as the physicists make clear to us, that all, ALL, things are
connected.
“The fundamental insight of
twentieth-century physics has yet to penetrate the social world:
RELATIONSHIPS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THINGS. At all levels of life,
“writes Capra, “from the metabolic networks inside cells to the food
webs of ecosystems and the networks of communications in human
societies, the components of living systems are inter-linked in network
fashion.”
We are one with all that is! The very foundation of our being we owe to the universe. Our birth is from all that went before us!
As
Brian Swimme, the physicist, says it: “ The rocks are Mozart! The
rocks are Picasso! The rocks are your ancestors!” And, once in class,
he held up an orange and said, “Do you know that when you eat an orange
you are eating the universe?”
We are connected. The physicists are beginning to explain how true this is.
In
1950 David Bohm predicted that when an atomic particle is split in two
and the spin of one portion of the split particle is altered, the spin
of the other portion would also change – instantaneously, regardless of
the distance that separated them. Years later Bohm wrote: “It is an
inference from the quantum theory that events that are separated in
space and that are without possibility of connection through
interaction are correlated, in a way that can be shown is incapable of
a detailed causal explanation.” This reveals a level of
interrelatedness that defies common notions of cause and effect.
“Today,
scientists are engaged in many experiments to explore the extent to
which such interdependence exists at more “macroscopic” levels beyond
atomic particles. For example, a recent study has shown that random
number generators (RNGs) around the world behaved in highly nonrandom
ways on September 11, 2001. RNGs are computer programs that generate
numbers that meet statistical conditions for randomness, as required
for various research applications. They are shielded from
electromagnetics, telecommunications, and all other known forces that
could cause systematic biases. In other words, these are computer
programs that are supposed to be insulated from all external influences
and are tested regularly to assure that this is so.”
However,
on September 11 these RNGs, in thirty-seven countries around the world,
went crazy, starting at 5:00am Eastern Standard Time (US) and reached a
height around 11:00am. They conclude that the terror, the love, the
heroism, the tragedy that occurred in New York on that day somehow
caused this effect. “It is highly unlikely that (known) environmental
factors could cause the correlations we observe” and that, barring
demonstrations to the contrary, “we are obliged to confront the
possibility that the measured correlations may be directly associated
with some (as yet poorly understood) aspect of consciousness attendant
to global events.”
Bell’s theorem and current
research such as the RNG studies suggest an interdependence that
extends beyond the “external” world, linking thought, emotion, and
measurable phenomena, potentially on even a global scale. (Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future by Peter Senge, C.Otto Scharmer, J,Jaworski, B.S.Flowers, pp. 200-201)
We are one with all that is!
Nothing
is separate. All is CONNECTED. We do not create community. We ARE
community. This is the third of the fundamental laws of the universe.
(Interiority, differentiation, community) Everything we do affects
everything else in the universe. This you know, I’m sure: that a
butterfly landing on a lotus plant in India affects the winds coming
off the lake in Chicago. That’s a physical fact, physicists tell us.
Thus, what we need to do is learn to recognize what already is, to
honor our interdependence, our connection with every created being.
This
interdependence does not lessen our value, does not wipe away our
uniqueness. Rather it enhances it, for the universe counts on the
creativity of every created being, and what’s more, God counts on our
uniqueness and creativity as well. As Eckhart says: “There where God
speaks the creatures, there God is.” And again, “God becomes as
creatures express God.”
How often do you reflect
upon the fact, the truth, that you are a unique expression of God in
the world, that you reveal to the world an aspect of God that no one
else can or will reveal? That you are unique, not just as a human
being, but as an individual within the species? How often do you
reflect upon the fact that every other living being reveals something
of God that only that person can reveal?
Then,
having reflected on this, we see the necessity of EVERY created being,
because all together they reveal more and more of God. There is no
plan that we all be alike! There is no desire that we imitate each
other! The Divine plan is that each created being become what it is
meant to be and thus to reveal something new about God. Then as we
gather together, free to be who we are, we can celebrate the God that
comes to life in us, in our community.
A tree is
all it is meant to be, a tree. But even every tree is different from
every other. A rock is what it is meant to be. Are you? Are you free to
be who you are? . . . another thought to consider as part of the “Who
am I? “ question. Am I really who I am? Am I in touch with the real
desires of my heart? Am I growing into the person I am meant to be, I
was created to be? Am I honoring my differences? Am I honoring the
unique revelation of God that I am?
And also, how
am I partaking in the on-going creative emerging of the universe? What
is my part in the creating of the universe? Or in other words, how am
I helping Jesus in bringing about the Kingdom?
How
does what I do affect the universe? The example of 9/11 tells us one
way that humans affect the world. But there are other examples. We are
all aware of the ecological crises brought about by the careless use of
the environment, the destruction of the rain forests etc. But it is
not just the destruction of the planet that is the effect of the
human’s existence. Do we have a purpose within the larger web of
life? If so, what is it? Too often we think only in human terms, of
how to make things better for us. We don’t wonder how we are meant to
contribute to life as a whole. The ancient peoples, the Anasazi,
believed that they needed to conduct their dances and ceremonies in
order to maintain balance in the universe. They believed that if they
neglected this duty, not only they but countless other forms of life
would suffer. We think them crazy. But is there a truth that we are
missing? In the October 2004 issue of National Geographic Magazine
there is an article about people who live like that today, and a Dr
Dave Hilton, Emory University Chaplain, says “I saw things there (in
Africa) – what we would call miraculous healings – that didn’t fit with
what I was taught in medical school, but the Africans had faith because
they had never been taught such things were impossible. I learned that
you don’t have to see to believe. You have to believe to see.” (“Mind
of God,” p.83)
So, what is our real purpose in
life? Who are you? What did the universe have in mind in spending 14
billion years of work to bring you to be here now? New research is
helping us recognize that perhaps we are part of this living,
generative field – that we influence it as it influences us.
There
is a Japanese scientist, Masaru Emoto, who has been working with water.
He is fascinated by water because, as he says, we are mostly water,
some 85% of our body weight, I think, the same percentage of water on
the surface of the earth. But anyway, he has been freezing water,
photographing it and studying the crystals formed by the water. He has
also used distilled water which is almost biologically inert and
therefore forms very simple crystals, or crystals that are so
underdeveloped that they have almost no distinct structure. Then he
has examples of distilled water crystals after the water has been
exposed to music – exquisite crystals as a result of the music, and all
very different according to to the music that is played. The crystals
reflect the essence of the music – Bach, Mozart, folk songs etc. It’s
as if the water were not only influenced by the music but absorbs and
reflects its character.
This scientist has also
taped words on the vials of distilled water. For instance the word
“beautiful” produces exquisite lacy crystals; the word “dirty” produces
undeveloped crystals that you could only call ugly.
Water is alive, he says, and the world is more interdependent than we realized.
Another
experiment: water taken from a highly polluted reservoir, frozen and
examined – no crystal structure whatever. Then an elder Buddhist monk
sat next to the reservoir and prayed for an hour for the well being of
the water. When they took new samples of the water and froze it, the
crystals were stunning. What’s more they found crystals unlike any
that they had seen before: seven-sided crystals rather than the usual
six-sided. When they asked the monk about his prayer, he told them he
had prayed to the Seven Goddesses.
So, who are we,
and what is our place in the universe? What did God have in mind to
have the universe work for 14 billion years so that we, you and I,
could be here in this place at this time?
Powerful question worth pondering.
Am
I fully who I am meant to be? Or as Brian Swimme says: “… manifesting
the interior reality of my being, creating my soul?” It is one aspect
of the ultimate aim of the universe, a universe created by God as an
expression of God’s overwhelming love and deep desire to share this
love.
Reading Teilhard is one way to help us to know these truths more deeply.
“Teilhard,”
as Ursula King explains, “was looking for a God of evolution, a God
whose image is truly commensurate with the complex dimensions of our
universe; a God who is not an outsider, a prime mover, but is deeply
involved with the entire cosmic process of which we form an integral
part; a truly living God, with us here and now, fully incarnate in
matter and all-becoming.”
For Teilard the world
was a miracle of wonder, revealing a beauty barely glimpsed by the rest
of us. For Teilhard it revealed the interconnectedness of all things,
it revealed the face of God; it revealed the power and the energy, the
incomprehensible love of our Creator God.
Even
Einstein recognized the power of wonder: “There are only two ways to
live your life,” He said. “One is as though nothing is a miracle. The
other is as if everything is.”
Teilhard knew, as
we are beginning to discover, that earth is spiritual, that o it knew
all along that life, conscious beings, consciousness was coming. Many
years after Teilhard’s death, Freeman Dyson, a professor of physics at
Princeton University, said, “The more I study the structure of the
universe, the clearer it is that the universe must have known from the
beginning that we were coming.”
One of the amazing
things is that Teilhard came to this understanding before the
physicists saw it, before the scientific facts that are available to us
today. For Teilhard lived as he told us:
To understand the world knowledge is not enough.
You must see it, touch it, live in its presence
And drink the vital heat of existence
In the very heart of reality.
The
very heart of reality, of that which happens, of that which is going
on, of the very movement of the earth, of the universe from the
beginning. Such a mystery this all is! There are forces moving in the
universe that have moved for 14 billion years, that have conspired, in
a way, to bring you, me, into being.
Nevertheless,
scientists say that were the process to be repeated it is HIGHLY
UNLIKELY that anything resembling a human being would emerge. For the
chance of life emerging as it did is zero probability. The chance of
consciousness emerging is the same. Scientists like Sir Bernard Lovell
tell us that if the universe had emerged a fraction of a second faster
or slower it would have exploded in such a way that it could never
coalesce into galaxies at a later stage or it would have collapsed back
on itself. So in its initial moment, a sacred moment in the epics of
most peoples, the universe came into existence at a slim – almost zero
-- margin of possibility. This fact, and the many other extremely
important transformations, like that from non-life to life, which again
took place at almost zero possibility, tell us something about the
fragility of the universe.
And we might add: something about the mystery of God, of creation, of our place in this creation.
Teilhard
thought that to come up to full measure, the human being must become
conscious of an infinite capacity for carrying himself/herself still
further; . . .must realize the duties it involves, and. . .must feel
its intoxicating wonder. The human must abandon all illusions of
narrow individuals and extend self, intellectually and emotionally, to
the dimensions of the universe; and this even though the mind reeling
at the prospect of this greatness, the person should think that he/she
is already in possession of the Divine, is God’s Very Self, or in
oneself the artisan of Godhead. (Writings in Time of War, 1968)
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