Cells in God's Being

A central tenet of Christianity is the Trinity.  I accept Trinity but I believe it is a mistake to continue to refer to God as three ‘persons’.  By continuing to refer to ‘persons’, defining ‘Father’ as the first person, we cannot help but conjure up the image of an old man with a long white beard looking down from afar.  I say there IS a God beyond our knowing, who had been manifested to humanity in three ways.

Creator God is the energy force of creation—of the entire Universe.  You can’t fit that into ‘a person’!  Can I understand God as a causal energy force?  Of course I can’t—but neither can I understand how falling water, or wind, or burning coal, or reflecting sunlight can be the cause of the electricity flowing through wires to light our homes and run our machines and computers at the touch of a button.  I don’t understand it yet I accept it.  So too, I believe God is the energy force of creation because I am here, and the world exists.  St. Paul states: ‘God is All in all.   All exists in God’.  The human person is of God and God is in the human person.  We are free to accept or reject that.

God as Savior chose to manifest the God-self as a human to demonstrate how we are to live this life and to give evidence to immortality.  Jesus was clearly ‘a person’, living the individuality of a singular human being, thus demonstrating the sacredness of our individuality.  He shared a limited existence in time.  Time is limiting, sequential, and one-directional.  Eternity is none of these.  Eternity is infinite, all encompassing and a totality.  God’s Being is in eternity.  Life and material being exists in God within that eternity but has the limit of time.  As Jesus, God accepted life’s limitations, in so doing, connected humanity to the God-self—then empowering God’s spirit to guide us if we but make that choice.  God never insists.

That spirit is the third manifestation of God, known as the Holy Spirit.  Teilhard de Chardin added to our understanding of Holy Spirit in his book The Divine Milieu. Divine of course refers to God.  Milieu is a French word that does not have an equivalent meaning in English.  A dictionary may define it as ‘environment’ but the meaning of milieu is so much deeper, it is the ‘everything’ that sustains one—the air you breath, sunlight, nature, the people and things that surround you.  Holy Spirit/Divine Milieu is God’s spirit of love and goodness that envelops us and seeks union.  It is ever-present.  The meaning carried by the term ‘divine milieu’ brings us to see more clearly that we are all connected.  We are of God, we live in God, and we each carry a spark of God within us whether or not we acknowledge and accept it.

We can say all this but it is beyond our ability to actually grasp, yet we are called to trust (have faith) that it is so . . . accepting that it is the key to a higher consciousness wherein we as a people come to recognize our interconnectedness and begin to live differently—emulating Jesus’ call to “Love God with your whole heart and soul and your neighbor as yourself.”

I like the analogy of humans as cells in God’s Being.

Evolution, Why Does it Matter?

I return to considering the works of Teilhard de Chardin.  His two best-known books are: The Phenomenon of Man (renamed The Human Phenomenon in a newer translation), it is his scientific treatise on the evolution of the earth and the human species; and The Divine Milieu, his mystic understanding of the God-humanity relationship.  A scientist and a Jesuit, his life was devoted to reconciling science and religion, the two seemingly conflicting paths for understanding who and what we are.

Science shows evolution to be the underlying principle of all that is; Teilhard fully accepts the reality of evolution and that it is God’s great plan, filled with meaning and purpose.  He has identified the ‘law of complexity-consciousness’ as the pattern that gives direction to evolution.  In that observable pattern, over eons, life progressed from single-cell entities to ultimately reach the purpose inherent from the beginning: the emergence of the human, a complex being created in God’s image possessing consciousness, thought and feeling, free will, creativity and the ability to love.  Teilhard refers to the evolutionary process as a ‘genesis’, a vast coming to be.

Full consciousness in the human species is not some random ‘surprise happening’; it is God’s intended goal for evolution.  Throughout, as organisms became more complex, simultaneously consciousness increased until, with the human, reflective awareness emerged with the birth of thought.  More than a change in degree, it was a change in nature to a new species.  With thought came the freedom to choose (free will) and responsibility for the direction chosen for the future.  As we advance in our ability to control and direct, it is clear that those abilities can have both wonderfully positive and horribly negative consequences.  We have yet to realize our world is one interacting/interdependent unit that stands in danger of self-destruction.

The search for knowledge and understanding has proceeded haphazardly without clear belief in a direction or goal . . . science and religion have argued over the preeminence of the world vs. God; science—in its arrogance—has suggested there is ONLY world and God is illusion.  Mystics of all traditions have recognized a link between God and world.

The poem in my previous entry is about the God-human relationship, co-creating a world on planet earth.

The wonder and order of the Universe; the intricate balance of the elements of our earth that support unexplainable, inexplicable life is proof to me of God . . . random chance cannot justify that level of order and balance—so I believe in the mystery that gave rise to such wonder and call the Mystery, God.  God prepared us to encounter life together and gave us the freedom to shape our world.  I can’t understand or explain God, but I’m convinced that we were given what we need and God has sprinkled humanity’s search for wisdom with clues that lead us toward understanding the why and who we are and our place in the great mystery of life. 

One of God’s ‘sprinkled clues’ as to our self-identity is found in the process we witness daily in observing human development from embryo to mature adult.  Begun in mysterious darkness, emerging with only primitive abilities, dependent and needing guidance, gradually discovering skills and abilities, growing into beings capable of shaping their own future.   –We’re adults now, God gave us the tools we need for survival and the rest is up to us.

I encourage you to turn back to my May 28 entry and read ‘Child is Father of the Man’ with these thoughts in mind.

A Consciousness Change

“The Age of Nations is past,

The task before us now, if we would not perish,

Is to build the earth.”

                                                                                                            Teilhard de Chardin

I believe there is a God and that there is meaning and purpose to our existence: humanity is to evolve and learn to live as God has directed—then we will join God in eternity.  I believe that Father God, who created life and the world, first guided infant humanity.  I believe he gave directions to Abraham to form the Jewish nation in a time when ‘Might Means Right’ was the only guiding principle.  For the nascent nation God chose Moses to lead their development with laws and rules.  This changed humanity’s consciousness.  It evolved from tribalism and led to the first Axial period wherein, throughout the globe, isolated clusters of humanity, led by great Prophets, laid the foundations of civilization between 800 and 200 B.C.

When God determined the time was ripe, God the Father ceased direct guidance, giving humanity full power of free will.  God entered time as the man Jesus, demonstrating how we are to live.  Like rebellious adolescents, mankind did not adopt ‘The Way’ given us by Jesus.  Some saw the wisdom and Christianity took hold, keeping Jesus’ words alive.  For centuries the world progressed physically in adolescent-like rebellion, playing dangerous war games, claiming for profit earth’s natural resources and rebelling against moral order.

We now stand on the brink of self-destruction!  We're children no longer, needing to be guided and led; we can see what the rebellion has achieved.  It is time to accept our adulthood—another consciousness change is needed—to recognize our world is one interacting/interdependent unit that will succeed or perish as a whole.

* * *

                                          THE CHILD IS FATHER OF THE MAN

From parent comes child

Who is destined himself to become parent.

From God comes man

Himself to become as God—

One to other

United in understanding

Through shared creation.

Each still is

But they share a being

Impossible without the evolutionary development.

But that is the completion—

The becoming is painful.

To grow under protective care:

                  To have one to give answers,

                  To have one to run to for comfort,

                  To have one to define limits’

                  To have one to forgive mistakes,

                  To have one to answer needs

                  To have one to see in us value . . . . . .

                                                      Childhood and Innocence.

Then to be alone:

                  To search out answers,

                  To endure without comfort,

                  To draw our own limits,

                  To be responsible for mistakes,

                  To find the means to answer needs,

                  To create our own value by our actions . . . .

                                                      Maturity and Responsibility.

The aloneness feels like abandonment;

But necessary for becoming.

It is weakness, cowardice, and death

To run back to the protectiveness outgrown.

It is strength, courage and life

To face the challenge alone.

The challenges to be met?

One cannot foretell.

For some they are few;

For others, many.

But the greater the challenges met and overcome,

The greater the one overcoming.

Refuse the challenge

               Deny the worth of the struggle.

                                 Give no example to those who follow,

                                                   Destruction . . . . . . .

                                                                     And worse yet,

                                                                                       Responsibility for that destruction!

Refusal, denial, and the killing of hope

Will not eliminate the responsibility inherent in maturation.

There is no choice but to go forward and build,

To find within the self

The ability to become as the One who gave being.

God is not dead

His infinite wisdom sees the necessity

Of Man’s accepting the responsibility

Of his own destiny.

The pain?

                  The suffering?

                                    The aloneness?

                                                      To be endured!

Instead of receiving,

It is now ours to give

The child must now become the father.

Seeing Oneness

In past entries I have written of Teilhard de Chardin and evolution, of our One World, of the Voice of women and most recently The Women’s March 2017 . . . seemingly disparate topics yet I see relationship among them.

Teilhard (1881-1955) a brilliant Scientist and Mystic saw clearly the interconnection of Science and Religion (‘the without’ and ‘the within’) as two sides of the same coin—humanity’s search for understanding and meaning.  In that pursuit we explore, dissect and analyze our world; we philosophize, hypothesize, and theologize our mortal existence.

The world we inhabit is one tiny unit in a vast universe, in its singularity providing all that is needed for its functioning as a life support source—so long as the elements stay in balance.

Throughout the eons of evolution that allowed mankind to develop from primitive, uncivilized, violent cave-men to sophisticated, articulate, rational beings, the voice of women was not permitted to influence the expanding social order (government, religion, conflict resolution . . .) Stated another way: Until recently the unique voice of half of humanity has been omitted from the planning of how we proceed with civilization.  Only within the last century have women gained the right to vote and hold office.  And in that brief 100+ years we’re coming to recognize that the silenced voice is not exclusive to women alone but is the missing piece for achieving ‘full humanity’ and it is women’s privilege and responsibility to awaken and articulate it—the voice of love, compassion and mercy.   It is the same voice that Jesus, the man, spoke with.

The Women’s March of January 12, 2017 was unprecedented—more light needs to be shone on it.  All over our world, groups of women recognized their call to make that voice heard.  Estimates say five million people—women, men and children—walked with dignity and calm, without violence, on some part of each of the seven continents of our One World.  Five million people gathered in one day in unity, calling for a voice other than that of violence, division, falsehood, and supremacy . . . a voice calling for peace, justice, equality, unity, love and respect.  Thousands of hand printed signs: “Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Human Rights”; “Build bridges not Walls”; “Save our Planet”; “Love not Hate” . . . . .

It is that voice which must be heard if we are to survive.

                                                    _ _ _

                        Conduit of Life’s Flow

I write of our One World in infinite space

A singular whole—God, nature, humanity

            This world is given

            with laws of nature

            guiding its continuance.

            That humankind is here

            is not of mortal doing,

            ‘Something’ (I call God)

            gave order to being.

            Life is the miracle

            to which we’ve been called,

            blessed with consciousness

            and the freedom to choose,

            we’re able to bring change.

Life continues its flow—now, through us!

            Only in seeing our Oneness

            and choosing to honor it

            will our world be sustained.