Weekly Pause & Ponder

This new worldview redefines several aspects of our self understanding, while also providing a challenge to engage differently with every aspect of the created universe.  We are invited to expand our sense of organicity, viewing the entire creation as essentially alive, with a dynamism that determines the life-quality of every other creature, ourselves included. In this scenario, we are not a superior life form. Aliveness belongs first and foremost to the universe, mediated to us through the Earth, with its range of chemical and physiological process that makes human life possible. Life, therefore, is not merely a biological outcome, embodied primarily in human beings. Life is a process, and humans are events rather than objects. Everything in creation grows, changes and develops. Life is more about becoming rather than about being.

God In The Midst Of Change: Wisdom for Confusing Times, by Diarmuid O’Murchu, p. 81.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

While our experience of oneness with the universe today will have much in common with the experiences of the past... it will also be profoundly different. The new paradigm is a continually evolving universe. All things have evolved and continue to evolve from an original explosion of energy that we call the “Big Bang” that occurred thirteen to fifteen billion years ago..... as Swimme and Berry point out “in every instance the supposition was that the universe was there in some stable form. Now we know that the universe is not in any way a fixed or stable entity but an ongoing process, “an irreversible sequence of transformations.” The universe is not a place. We do not live in the universe; we are part of the process. This is the new paradigm that has shaken the foundations of all our previous assumptions.

Jesus Today:A Spirituality of Radical Freedom, by Albert Nolan, p. 171.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

“We are not called to relate to God without a world. To love God we must also love what God loves. We are called to love this created world as God loves it.  We are to help transform this universe from within by seeing Christ in the heart of matter – in all peoples, creatures, elements, stars, and galaxies. Such vision requires openness to new relationships, new ideas, abandoning messianic expectations, accepting incomple-ness as part of life, recovering the capacity of wonder, and living in the primacy of love.  Unless we realize the Christ in our own personal lives, however, we shall continue to suffer the violence of blind evolution.  We have the capacity to heal this earth and bind its wounds in love, but do we have the desire?”

The Emergent Christ: Exploring the Meaning of Catholic in an Evolutionary Universe, by Ilia Delio, p. 150.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

“We are not called to relate to God without a world. To love God we must also love what God loves. We are called to love this created world as God loves it. We are to help transform this universe from within by seeing Christ in the heart of matter – in all peoples, creatures, elements, stars, and galaxies. Such vision requires openness to new relationships, new ideas, abandoning messianic expectations, accepting incomplete-ness as part of life, recovering the capacity of wonder, and living in the primacy of love. Unless we realize the Christ in our own personal lives, however, we shall continue to suffer the violence of blind evolution. We have the capacity to heal this earth and bind its wounds in love, but do we have the desire?”

 

The Emergent Christ: Exploring the Meaning of Catholic in an Evolutionary Universe, by Ilia Delio, p. 150.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

“The real religion of humankind can be said to be spirituality itself, because mystical spirituality is the origin of all the world religions. If this is so, and I believe it is, we might also say that interspirituality – the sharing of ultimate experiences across traditions – is the religion of the third millennium. Interspirituality is the foundation that can prepare the way for a planet-wide enlightened culture, and a continuing community among the religions that is substantial, vital and creative. Interspirituality is not about eliminating the world’s rich diversity of religious expression. It is not about rejecting these traditions’ individuality for a homogeneous super-spirituality. It is not an attempt to create a new form of spiritual culture. Rather, it is an attempt to make available to everyone all the forms the spiritual journey assumes.”

The Mystic Heart:Discovering A Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions by Wayne Teasdale, p. 26.