If you watched the royal wedding on TV last week you heard Bishop Curry’s wonderful sermon on love. He made several references to Martin Luther King but he also quoted the contemporary theologian and mystic Teilhard de Chardin whose works are still unknown to the majority of people. It is Teilhard’s writings that are the underpinnings of all that I write about—they are the fruit of long-term vision. He was a paleontologist looking back at the earth’s beginning and ahead to its future trajectory of love’s realization by humanity.
Bishop Curry ended his sermon with a paraphrase of the famous Teilhard quote: “Someday, after mastering the wind, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love and then for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
Look carefully at what those words are saying—for humans to have discovered how to capture and control the energy of fire provided us with the possibility of all the great inventions to follow. Fire was not invented by man, but he discovered how to utilize it to his advantage . . . we cannot imagine our world without that discovery.
Teilhard and Bishop Curry are saying we have yet to discover the essence and energy of love. The Bishop’s talk is titled ‘The Power of Love’ (go to Google or YouTube to find it). We’ve romanticized and sentimentalized love, we have given its name to what isn’t love and we have failed to recognize its great power to change the world.
Love isn’t a human invention any more than fire is; love is of God and from God—but too often we treat it lightly, not recognizing its powerful potential. At it core love is unselfish, sacrificial and redemptive. To choose to accept it and live it requires courage, selfless sacrifice, and long-term vision.
God awaits humanity collectively to live by love and that will take eons of time, as one by one we individually awakens to the true nature of it, live it and by our example pass it on. As Teilhard said . . . if we harness for God the energy of love, for the second time we would have discovered fire . . . only with love can we change the world.
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