Weekly Pause & Ponder

In our very longing for a world free from violence and injustice, lie the seeds of hope.  But such hope can only be sustained by the certitude conferred by faith. As the Universal House of Justice assures us: “The turmoil and crises of our time underlie a momentous transition in human affairs… That our earth has contracted into a neighbourhood, no one can seriously deny. The world is being made new. Death pangs are yielding to birth pangs. The pain shall pass when members of the human race act upon the common recognition of their essential oneness. There is a light at the end of this tunnel of change beckoning humanity to the goal destined for it according to the testimonies recorded in all the Holy Books.”

Article by Matthew Weinberg entitled “Identity and the Search for a Common Purpose.”

Weekly Pause & Ponder

The universe may be said to be the original Adam, a great body of dust, organized into a system and energized by the “breath” of God so that it keeps on developing becoming more complex – more diversified, more interactive, and therefore more unified. The Universe shows the Holy Oneness of Being. This is our home. We might even say, this is who we are. All of us are this one being…. We are the universe’s own.

God’s Ecstasy: the Creation of a Self-Creating World by Beatrice Bruteau, p. 14-15.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

Creation is our true, authentic home, the household of all life, including those who have gone before us. The afterlife does not exist outside creation, but within it, a realm in which our departed loved ones inhabit a different level of being – within the one cosmos.

Webpage of Diarmuid O’Murchu, Adult Faith Development.

Weekly Pause & Ponder

The oldest religions on our planet are not the “great world religions” of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, but the religions of the native people of the Americas, Africa, Ancient Europe, Australia, Polynesia and Asia. In these religions one finds deep memories of what essayist Frederick Turner calls “aboriginal mother love.” These religions arose in cultural periods that were matrifocal. They reverenced Mother Earth and her fruitfulness: they were nondualistic in their celebration of their celebration of the “sacred hoop” that binds all creatures of the earth together – the rock people, the cloud people, the tree people, the finned ones, the winged ones, and the two-legged ones. By following the cycles of seasons and harmonizing with the wisdom of Mother Earth they shared in the family of creation.

The Coming of the Cosmic Christ by Matthew Fox, p. 24

Weekly Pause & Ponder

The quest for the meaning of life, the search for our true essence, or – as we Christians usually say – for God, is part of the basic principle of evolution. Actually it isn’t a search at all. Rather the Divine is unfolding in us and through us. The Divine comes to consciousness in us. We think that as human beings we are on a quest for God. But we’re not the ones searching for the Ultimate Reality. Rather it is the Ultimate Reality that causes the dissatisfied yearning and the search in us. God is the seeker. God awakens in us. We ourselves can’t do anything; we can only let go so the Divine can unfold itself. We can only "get out of God’s way," as Eckhart says. The essential nature reveals itself if only we don’t prevent it. And if there is a redemption, then we are redeemed from being possessed by our ego so that our real selves scan spread their wings.

Search for the Meaning of Life by Willigis Jager, p. 13.