Weekly Pause & Ponder

When people begin to think about God in relation to this world, the stunning natural world opened up to our wonder but being destroyed by our wasting leads to a whole new approach. In former times, the basic conception of the world was that it was created in the beginning and remained a static entity; God’s activity consisted primarily in maintaining what had already been established. Now that we realize that the world is becoming, that genuinely new things come into being by evolution and other processes, fresh ideas of divine presence and agency are needed. To date these have centered on the Spirit of God, called the Creator Spirit in the great medieval hymn Veni Creator Spiritus. As it integrates the revelatory experience of a personal God into an expansive cosmological setting, ecological theology, replete in its fullest measure with social justice and eco-feminist insights, is mapping yet another new frontier.

Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, by Elizabeth Johnson, p. 187.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

We use the term “consciousness” to refer to how you experience the world. This use of consciousness includes all of your perceptions, both conscious and unconscious. A closely related term is worldview. At times, how you experience the world may feel completely involuntary. “I view the world this way because the world is this way – what other way is there to view it?” It can be very difficult to shift a firmly entrenched model of reality. We can get pretty attached to what we think is true, important, and real – even when presented with evidence to the contrary. To a great extent, our worldview determines our perception of reality. What our worldview doesn’t expand to contain quite literally escapes our perception. We just don’t see it. This perception of reality colors our reactions and actions, every moment of every day.

Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life, by Schlitz, Vieten and Amorok, p. 18.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

To grasp the dynamism of Christianity, one must accept evolution as the explanation for unfolding life. Evolution is not background to the human story; it is the human story.   ...Teilhard recognized that there is a unifying influence in the whole evolutionary process, a centrating factor that continues to hold the entire process together and move it forward toward greater complexity and unity. His faith in Christ led him to posit Christ as the future fullness of the whole evolutionary process. Christ is the centrating principle, the pleroma, and the Omega Point where the individual and collective adventure of humanity finds its end and fulfillment. Through his penetrating view of the universe, he found Christ present within the entire cosmos, from the least particle of matter to the convergent human community. The whole cosmos is incarnational.

From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating An Unfinished Universe. Edited by Ilia Delio, p.172 and 173.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

In the case of the cosmos, we can say that God as Creator is incarnate as self-creating universe, such as, for instance, ourselves as human beings. Creativity itself is what is evolving in the cosmos, and we are at the growing edge as the Trinitarian Life Cycle moves from Transcendent to Incarnate to Realized. We are in a position to realize ourselves as incarnate divine creativity. This has two effects. It makes the whole thing intensely meaningful. ...And this is the other effect: we bear some responsibility. We have to take our part in the work. What will we do? What are we “supposed to” do?

God’s Ecstacy: The Creation of a Self-Creating World, by Beatrice Bruteau, p. 178.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

To be a disciple of Jesus is not to cling to Jesus but to go forth as part of the cosmic family, to enter into new relationships. The message of Jesus can be summed up in several key ideas: make wholes where there are divisions, forget the past and go forward, allow the Spirit to work in you to create a new future; do these things because God seeks a new presence in the cosmos, a new unity in love, peace, and justice. The whole gospel message is based on the advent of new life. Jesus shows us that new life is possible; indeed, the risen Christ is the hope of the cosmos, the Christ who is coming to be in and through us.  ...Christian life is a way of being related in the world and to the world. It is recognizing that relationships form the field of gospel values rather than gospel values forming relationships.

The Emergent Christ: Exploring The Meaning Of Catholic In An Evolutionary Universe, by Ilia Delio, p. 110.