Tag: Teilhard de Chardin

THE UNION OF HEAVEN AND EARTH

“Heaven and earth will pass away”

as separate states.

Teilhard helps people 

be in the world

to which they necessarily belong.

He overcame the Church’s contempt

for the world

when he said “Love is 

the fundamental engine

of evolution.”

The litmus test for true vision:

to see the world as a Temple

and your enemies as sacred and beloved.

In the naked now

the best way to intimacy with God

is immediate, unmediated living

in the present, which is a present, a gift.

Living in non-defended, nondual presence

connects you to Real Presence.

The Quantum Theologian’s question is not 

our love for God

but God’s Love for us.

How is it

that from total otherness

comes our ultimate meaning? 

Eastern religion emphasized

the search for spiritual guides,

enlightenment, the True Self.

But western religion buried for centuries

spiritual searching under dogma,

obedience, and no questioning.

All the answers to questions you never asked

are in the Catechism – just read it!

Still, there were rays of pure light:

Catherine of Siena’s Dialogue

offered a systematic process 

for knowing God 

within you 

beginning and ending 

with humility.

If by God’s grace you have

Inner and Outer Authority

like Catherine

you avoid being both 

rebel or conformist.

God and nirvana 

are living realities

beyond all concepts

so Buddhists never talk about nirvana

they merely practice

mindfulness in all things

and so get intimate 

with the Buddha.

This gives a new vision 

for western religion:

include experience/practice/community

not just believing/behaving/belonging.

Heidegger’s Being and Time

was too individualistic. There is no community

but Being-Itself constantly overcomes non-being 

within it

and unceasingly creates

new things:

In intimate communion with Christ

there is always a New Creation.

The Internet as a new creation

and a convergence of Teilhard’s noosphere

could be the servant of global communion

not the conveyor belt

of global fragmentation/anarchy.

What the world needs now is

Bonaventure’s vision 

that predated Teilhard:

a dynamic universe

oriented towards union

with God and human

that finds fulfilment

in Christ.

3 Big Ideas for May 15, 2019

  1. Teilhard de Chardin was a Christian mystic who believed that love and energy are the foundation of the cosmos. This “love-energy” is the source of the universe’s intelligibility and therefore the basis of knowledge. This leads philosophy out of the impasse of making matter the basis of all empirical knowledge. Philosophers have traditionally made love secondary to knowledge – you have to first know something before you can love it. But for lovers of God like Teilhard, love is the source and goal of all knowledge.
  2. Christian martyrs were willing to die for their faith because they believed “all is one” – everything, including life and death, is under the care of God. Now we have arrived at a similar state by the reverse process: we no longer believe there is a God, all is passing away, and therefore all is meaningless. Without God, all is not one, it is zero. The martyr was willing to die for God, but would the secular non-believer be willing to die for zero? This is important when you are speaking truth to power and fighting injustice.
  3. Almost everything wrong with the world has to do with the way the “It” of institutions can be misaligned, out of control, and disconnect with the “I” and the “We.” The personal is destroyed by the impersonal when corporations, governments, and religious institutions become out of touch with the people they are meant to serve, and only serve themselves. The result is exploitation of others for money or sex, and rape of the planet’s resources on which we all depend. Unitive thinking, the idea that all is one, keeps the “It” of hierarchies connected to the common good, the “We.”