Weekly Pause & Ponder

Love energy marks the history of the universe. It is present from the Big Bang onward, though indistinguishable from molecular forces. It amplifies itself by way of union because it “is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces . . . The physical structure of the universe is love.” It draws together and unites; in uniting it differentiates. Love is the core energy of evolution and its goal.  

...Love-energy is intrinsically relational and as core energy undergirds relationality in the universe. Beings do not act toward a self-sufficient end in which relationship may or may not be important; rather, union is the end toward which each being directs itself.

The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, by Ilia Delio, pp.44-45.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

The consciousness we possess as human beings, contrary to being a special endowment with which we seek to lord it over the rest of creation, needs to be freshly understood as an integral dimension of the ‘intelligence’ that permeates all life in the universe. The greater intelligence is the superior form, not ours. We belong to a reality greater than ourselves, an envelope of consciousness informing our awareness, intuition and imagination – in what is essentially an intelligent universe. All our thoughts, dreams and aspirations arise from this cosmic wellspring within which we live and grow, and are empowered to realise our full potential as planetary, cosmic creatures. Anything short of this global engagement leaves us unfulfilled, frustrated and ultimately alienated from God and humanity.

Reclaiming Spirituality, by Diarmuid O’Murchu, p. 99.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

Life is changing constantly, but change is never random. There are always causes and conditions. The reason that living systems change is in order to survive. If their environment shifts, they adapt, figuring out what works in the context of now. They don’t do this as isolated individuals but as neighborhoods. Each individual is free to decide how it will change, but individual adaptations only work within the context of community. It’s more accurate to think of sense making and adapting as a collective activity, individual creativity within a community. And it’s a process that works well to create difference, differentiation, and coherence - billions of species living in a web of “inter-being,” as Thich Nhat Hahn describes it. This is our wondrous planet, “A world which gives birth to ever new variety and ever new manifestations of order against a background of constant change,” adapting, experimenting, discovering what works and, ultimately, surprising us with what emerges.

So Far From Home:lost and found in our brave new world,
by Margaret J. Wheatley p. 40.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

The central idea of the Western tradition is that human beings are partners with God in the continuing creation of the world. “Creation” isn’t something that happened a long time ago in the past. It’s what’s going on right now, right this  minute. We’re in the midst of it. As Jesus said, God is God “not of the dead but of the living” (Mat. 22:32). Theologically we are living in an open universe. We have access to endless energy.  Being creative is the nature of Being itself, and it is our nature. We can’t identify or judge ourselves by what we have been. We must look to what we yet shall be.

...This idea of the future. The idea of an intentional transformation of the fundamental arrangements of existence. The idea that God expects things to change, wants things to change, intends change and growth and improvement, and expects us to participate in this creative effort. God is the God of the living, is the living God. Maybe there will never be a time when it’s finished, all over.
 

The Holy Thursday Revolution by Beatrice Bruteau, p. 248.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

"While all forms of life, to differing degrees, have consciousness, only human beings have the miraculous capacity to be aware of consciousness itself. As human beings, we know that we know. This capacity for self-reflective awareness, or self-consciousness, in the context of fourteen billion years of development, is a very recent emergence.  And it means everything. Because of the gift of self-reflective awareness, the human being, distinct from all other forms of life, has the capacity to recognize his or her own true identity as being not separate from the whole event of creation....The human vehicle becomes a vessel through which the whole universe is able to know itself."

Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening by Andrew Cohen, pp.43-44.