Weekly Pause & Ponder

Somewhere deep down we are all filled with a mystical longing, with a longing for ultimate meaningfulness, and therefore we need to see all of our world in that context.  To attain this in today’s climate, we need a new theology of the cosmos–one that is grounded in the best science of our day. It will be a theology in which God is very present precisely in all the dynamism and patterns of the created order. A theology of evolution sees God as deeply involved in the evolutionary process of the world. God is making the world by means of evolution. And the evolutionary process in its turn is seen as striving toward God. So, you see, God is Self-expressing and Self-realizing in evolution.

An interview with Beatrice Bruteau, An article from Enlightenext. First appeared in Issue 21, “The Future of God.”

Weekly Pause & Ponder

Life exists in an ever-present state. It is never created, never destroyed. Life continually evolves itself, expressing various dimensions, forms and conditions. Our view of life is too often limited to the particular expressions that we witness in the world, remaining oblivious to its eternally present nature that supersedes all physical, mental and material forms.... There is one life in all of existence and non-existence, Infinite Consciousness, and we are one and the same with this life. There are unique, innumerable expressions of Consciousness, but they are all united with the central life from which all emanates.

Enlightened Consciousness: Entereing New Dimensions of Spiritual Awareness by Griff Obrien, pp.82-83.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

For much of Christian history, Christians have usurped the vision and challenge of the Companionship of Empowerment (Kingdom of God). We tend to overspiritualize the concept, assigning it to personal spiritual growth or salvation in a world beyond.... The Companionship of Empowerment is based on a vision inspired by the lure of the future. In essence, commitment to the Companionship is about striving to make the world a better place for all God’s creatures, a rediscovery of paradise where all can live in the nonviolent power of justice and love. It may sound utopian, but without this utopia, evolution can never advance into the greater complexity that God seems to intend for all creation. In this understanding, the new vision of empowerment is not merely about people and the human situation; it also embraces transformative challenges of global and cosmic proportions.  

Christianity’s Dangerous Memory: A Rediscovery of the Revolutionary Jesus by Diarmuid O’Murchu, pp.34-36.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

In every age, the meaning and impact of spirituality has been influenced by factors of global proportion. To understand the emerging spirituality we need to be aware of the global ferment of our time: a growing awareness of our planet as one Earth, destined to be shared equally by all...the growing realization that nothing in our world – religious or otherwise – can be comprehensively understood apart from a multi-disciplinary mode of exploration....  It is a spirituality that transcends what each and all religions claim to represent. It is a spirituality that engages with the search for meaning as people struggle to interrelate more authentically in what we progressively consider to be an interdependent world, within an eternally evolving universe.

Reclaiming Spirituality, by Diarmuid O’Murchu, p 171-172.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

God’s bestowal of grace began with time itself. It is interwoven in our history. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, all creation has been pressured from within to evolve. Inert matter evolved, becoming ever more conscious, until, at a particular moment in the concrete history of the world, self-reflective consciousness emerged in a species we call human. The material universe that came into existence and was maintained by grace finally became aware of the grace that had been there all along, the self-communication of the Holy Spirit that was at the heart of all life. In the Christian story we locate this moment of evolutionary history in the person of Jesus, the Christ, but we celebrate it in ourselves as well.

Field of Compassion: How The New Cosmology Is Transforming Spiritual Life, by Judy Cannato, p. 148