The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers |
Teilhard, Einstein, Aquinas, Ricoeur & Simone Weil on Cosmic Awareness |
Reintroducing a cosmic
awareness to the way we look at the world and develop our work worlds and institutions is basic to our survival as a species—and to the joy we undergo on our time on earth. |
This is not only true in the practical realm of eco-awareness and caring for Mother Earth without whose health we do not survive, but also when we consider care for our souls, for example the joy and beauty and caring that make us whole and content and resistant | As within, so without. Clockwise from top left: 1) “Forest” by Allain Siddiqui on Unsplash. 2) Tree-like branching in lungs. HouseOfMica.org. 3) Tributaries of the Yarlung Tsangpo River. NASA. 4) Fungal hyphae form mycelium networks among trees. Wikimedia Commons. |
to
avarice and greed and envy. Consider this teaching from Teilhard de Chardin, mystic, poet, scientist, Jesuit priest: It is almost commonplace today to find people who, quite naturally and unaffectedly, live in the explicit consciousness of being an atom or a citizen of the universe. This collective awakening must inevitably have a profound religious reaction on the mass of mankind—either to cast down or to exalt. Do we—including our institutions of education and politics, religion and economics–“cast down”? Or “exalt”? |
An excerpt from “The Council of All Beings” ritual, invoking Our Relations to guide with their wisdom. Elizabeth Darlington. | Albert Einstein tells us that "the most important function of art and science is to awaken the cosmic religious feeling and keep it alive.” Is our art—music and theater, film and video, dance and architecture—busy “awakening the cosmic |
religious feeling and keeping it alive?” Why or why not? How about
our rituals and ceremonies and liturgies? Are they doing the same? To speak of the cosmos is not to speak of something very big “out there.” It is to awaken a way of seeing, a way of living and of consciousness that take in the mystery of the universe and
in fact every human person is capable of. Thomas Aquinas says that this is what makes the human person great: That each one of us is “capax universi,” capable of the universe. |
But are we taught that greatness
in our schools? In the media? In our religions? In our homes? The micro/macrocosmic vision of the world is a psychology in itself. Paul Ricoeur speaks to this truth when he writes: | “Meditation.” Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay |
...to manifest the ‘sacred’ on the ‘cosmos’ and to manifest it in the ‘psyche’ are the same thing…. Cosmos and Psyche are the two poles of the same ‘expressivity’; I express myself in expressing the world; I explore my own
sacrality in deciphering that of the world. Here dualisms of us and cosmos, of inside and outside, of receiving and giving are broken through. Here unity is celebrated. Simone Weil tells us therefore that “one should identify with the universe itself.” |
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, p. 66. Banner Image: Step into the cosmos. Photo by Evgeni Tcherkasski on Unsplash |
Queries for Contemplation Have you learned to identify with the universe itself? Do you see yourself in the universe and the universe in you? What difference does that make? Do you manifest the sacred on the cosmos and in the psyche? |
Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, please click HERE
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Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation
Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story | |
See Matthew Fox's full calendar
HERE |
Join Matthew Fox and a speaker’s panel for brief Creation Spirituality presentations, music, songs, prayer, and refreshments in a free online and on-site Celebration of Matthew Fox's donation of papers
to the University of Colorado, Boulder. University of Colorado Boulder Libraries – Center for British & Irish Studies – 5th Floor Thursday, September 21, 4:00pm-6:00pm PT RSVP HERE for on-site attendance only. Virtual attendance link will be forthcoming. |
Creation Spirituality Conversations |
Aaron Perry hosts Matthew Fox on the Y On Earth podcast, on “Hildegard von Bingen & Her “Viriditas,” sharing profound wisdom and deep insights about
the essential importance of our relationship with Mother Earth, our celebration of the Divine Feminine, and our connection with Creation Spirituality, drawing upon centuries of knowledge and wisdom from indigenous and mystical traditions world-wide… particularly from the Rhineland Mystic Movement of the medieval European Renaissance, and a most extraordinary woman at its helm: Hildegard von Bingen. | |
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