During
World War II, Jesuit priest Walter Ciszek (1904–1984) was accused of being a
“Vatican spy.” After spending five years in a Moscow prison, he was sentenced
to fifteen years of hard labor in Siberian prison camps. He is an example of
someone whose life has been pared down to the “one thing necessary.”
Through
the long years of isolation and suffering, God had led me to an understanding
of life and [God’s] love that only those who have experienced it can fathom.
God had stripped away from me many of the external consolations, physical and
religious, that people rely on and had left me with a core of seemingly simple
truths to guide me. And yet what a profound difference they had made in my
life, what strength they gave me, what courage to go on! I wanted to tell
others about them. . . .
The
simple soul who each day makes a morning offering of “all the prayers, works,
joys, and sufferings of this day”—and who then acts upon it by accepting
unquestioningly and responding lovingly to all the situations of the day as
truly sent by God [I prefer to say
“allowed” although it helps many people to see all situations as “sent by God.”
And who really knows?]—has perceived with an almost childlike faith the
profound truth about the will of God. . . . God’s will for us is clearly
revealed in every situation of every day, if only we could learn to view all
things as God sees them. . . .
The
challenge lies in learning to accept this truth and act upon it, every moment
of every day. The trouble is that like all great truths, it seems too simple.
It is there before our noses all the time, while we look elsewhere for more
subtle answers. It bears the hallmark of all divine truths, simplicity, and yet
it is precisely because it seems so simple that we are prone to overlook it or
ignore it in our daily lives. . . .
The
fullest freedom I had ever known, the greatest sense of security, came from
abandoning my will to do only the will of God. . . .
For
what can ultimately trouble the soul that accepts every moment of every day as a
gift from the hands of God and strives always to do God’s will? “If God is for
us, who can stand against us?” [Romans 8:31]. Nothing, not even death, can
separate us from God. . . . Is this too simple, or are we just afraid really to
believe it, to accept it fully and in every detail of our lives, to yield
ourselves up to it in total commitment? This is the ultimate question of faith,
and each one of us must answer it for ourselves in the quiet of our heart and
the depths of our soul. But to answer it in the affirmative is to know a peace,
to discover a meaning to life, that surpasses all understanding.
Anyone in Fr. Walter’s situation could not fake such radical faith and trust. It had to be real.
The land is God’s. . . . Caring for the land, every day, is my way to be close to God. [God’s] land must be honored. —Eli, an Amish farmer
Poet, author, and farmer Wendell Berry is a shining example of humility and simple living. He’s made it his life’s concern to commit to one beloved plot of land in Kentucky. He says everything he’s learned has been through his faithfulness to that commitment. He reminds me of St. Francis of Assisi in that he loves nature deeply and takes the Gospel seriously. Berry writes of the profound pleasure that can come from simple things—if we can attune ourselves to them:
It is astonishing, and of course discouraging, to see economics now elevated to the position of ultimate justifier and explainer of all the affairs of our daily life, and competition enshrined as the sovereign principle and ideal of economics. . . . It is impossible not to notice how little the proponents of the ideal of competition have to say about honesty, which is the fundamental economic virtue, and how very little they have to say about community, compassion, and mutual help. . . . For human beings, affection is the ultimate motive, because the force that powers us, as [John] Ruskin [1819–1900] also said, is not “steam, magnetism, or gravitation,” but “a Soul.”. . . [1]
Is it possible to look beyond this all-consuming “rush” of winning and losing to the possibility of countrysides, a nation of countrysides, in which use is not synonymous with defeat? It is. But in order to do so we must consider our pleasures. . . . [There are] pleasures that are free or without a permanent cost. . . . These are the pleasures that we take in our own lives, our own wakefulness in this world, and in the company of other people and other creatures—pleasures innate in the Creation and in our own good work. It is in these pleasures that we possess the likeness to God that is spoken of in Genesis. [God looked upon all that God had created and saw that it was very good (Genesis 1:31).] . . .
The passage suggests . . . that our truest and profoundest religious experience may be the simple, unasking pleasure in the existence of other creatures that is possible to humans. It suggests that God’s pleasure in all things must be respected by us in our use of things. . . . It suggests too that we have an obligation to preserve God’s pleasure in all things. . . .
Where is our comfort but in the free, uninvolved, finally mysterious beauty and grace of this world that we did not make, that has no price? Where is our sanity but there? Where is our pleasure but in working and resting kindly in the presence of this world?
Despite
many differing views of Jesus’ life and teaching, we can say confidently that
Jesus was a poor man who fully embraced life with those on the margins of
society. Francis of Assisi certainly did the same, and it became his litmus
test for all orthodoxy and ongoing transformation into God. Clare of Assisi
(1194–1253) wanted to imitate Francis in this and I acknowledge that she and
her sisters, the Poor Clares, have kept the vow of poverty much better than we
Franciscan friars have done. Today, Bridget Mary Meehan helps us understand how
radical simplicity helped Clare and her sisters come to a singleness of focus
and heart.
Clare understood
that love and poverty [or what
I would call simplicity] are connected. She taught that poverty
frees one from the bondage of material things and from all the things that
clutter the human heart and soul. . . . .
Gospel poverty
was at the heart of Clare’s rule. The Poor Ladies owned nothing; they lived
simply without property, endowments, or any kind of material possessions. For
Clare, doing without things led to deep communion with God. Her way of life was
characterized by a deep trust in God to provide for the needs of the community.
Whatever the Poor Ladies received was sufficient. Openness and receptivity
reflected Clare’s attitudes toward people and things. For her, everything was
gift. She and her “ladies” lived the gospel passionately according to the
Franciscan ideal.
Through the
centuries Clare has continued to be a beacon of light to women and men who long
to love Christ with an undivided heart, to serve others generously, and to live
simply in a world that glorifies material possessions. If we have too many
clothes in our closets, too much money in the bank, too many things cluttering
our lives, Clare can help us find the one thing necessary—God who will liberate
and fill our emptiness with divine love. Our conversion process may take
time—sometimes years—but we will experience freedom and joy when we live with a
loose grasp on material things, when we are willing to share our possessions as
well as our time and energy with those in need. . . .
How often do we
take a deep breath and appreciate—really appreciate—the air we breathe? How
often do we savor the food we taste and smell the flowers along our path? When was
the last time we listened to our child, laughed with a friend, embraced our
spouse? It is true that the best things in life are free, but we are often too
distracted or too busy to see the simple treasures of life right in front of
us.
I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. —Lao Tzu
Most of us have grown up with a capitalist worldview which makes a virtue and goal out of accumulation, consumption, and collecting. It has taught us to assume, quite falsely, that more is better. But it’s hard for us to recognize this unsustainable and unhappy trap because it’s the only game in town. When parents perform multiple duties all day and into the night, it is the story line that their children surely absorb. “I produce therefore I am” and “I consume therefore I am” might be today’s answers to Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.” These identities are all terribly mistaken, but we can’t discover the truth until we remove the clutter.
The course we are on assures us of a predictable future of strained individualism, environmental destruction, severe competition as resources dwindle for a growing population, and perpetual war. Our culture ingrains in us the belief that there isn’t enough to go around, which determines most of our politics and spending. In the United States there is never enough money for adequate health care, education, the arts, or even basic infrastructure. At the same time, the largest budget is always for war, bombs, and military gadgets. I hope we can all recognize how the tragic consequences of these decisions are being played out right now.
E. F. Schumacher (1911–1977) said years ago, “Small is beautiful,” and many other wise people have come to know that less stuff invariably leaves room for more soul. In fact, possessions and soul seem to operate in inverse proportion to one another. Only through simplicity can we find deep contentment instead of perpetually striving and living unsatisfied. Simple living is the foundational social justice teaching of Jesus, Francis and Clare of Assisi, Dorothy Day, Pope Francis, and all hermits, mystics, prophets, and seers since time immemorial.
Franciscan spirituality asks us to let go, to recognize that there isenough to go around and meet everyone’s need but not everyone’s greed. A worldview of enoughness will predictably emerge in us as we realize our naked being in Godinstead of thinking that more of anything or more frenetic doing can fill up our infinite longing and restlessness. Francis did not just tolerate or endure simplicity; he loved it and called it poverty. Francis dove into simplicity and found his freedom there. This is hard for most of us to even comprehend. Thankfully, new monastics like Tessa Bielecki, Shane Claiborne, and Adam Bucko illustrate how this is still possible even in our modern world.
Francis knew that climbing ladders to nowhere would never make us happy nor create peace and justice on this earth. Too many have to stay at the bottom of the ladder so we can be at the top. Living simply helps level the playing field and offers abundance and enoughness to all, regardless of our status or state of belonging to religion or group.
Story from Our Community: I run a food pantry in . . . Massachusetts. During the pandemic, the number of families we serve has doubled, and so has the tonnage of food we distribute. At times the task can be daunting. The readings and resulting prayers [of the Daily Meditations] have shifted my thinking. I no longer think of our work as service, but as an act of solidarity, of becoming one with our neighbors. Service implies a vertical relationship, one above another. Solidarity calls for a horizontal, two-way relationship between equals, one to one. Of course, God is at the center of it all. —Tom M.
When
the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together,
and one of them [a scholar of the law] tested him by asking, “Teacher, which
commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the
Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your
mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend
on these two commandments.” —Matthew 22:34-40
The greatest
commandment is to love God and the best way I know to love God is to love what
God loves—which is everything! Surely this is the way that Jesus loves. To love
as Jesus loves, we too must be connected to the Source of love.
My spiritual father
Francis of Assisi (1194–1253) was definitely connected to the Source. He truly
experienced radical participation in God’s very life. Such practical knowing of
his value and true identity allowed Francis to let go of status, privilege, and
wealth. Francis knew he was part of God’s plan, connected to creation and other
beings, inherently in communion and in love. Francis taught his followers to
own nothing so they would not be owned by their possessions. Francis said:
My brothers! My brothers! God has called me by
the way of [humility] and showed me the way of simplicity. . . . And the Lord
told me what He wanted: He wanted me to be a new fool in the world. God did not
wish to lead us by any way other than this knowledge. . . . [1]
If you don’t
live from within your own center of connection and communion with God, you’ll
go spinning around many other things. The true goal of all religion is to lead
you back to the place where everything is one, to the experience of radical
unity with all of humanity and all of creation, and hence to the experience of
unity with God, who is the Great Includer of all else.
When you live in
pure consciousness, letting the naked being of all reality touch your own naked
being, you experience foundational participation. Out of that plentitude—a
sense of satisfaction and inner enoughness, a worldview of abundance—you find
it much easier to live simply. You realize you don’t “need” as much. You’ve
found your satisfaction at an inner place, at a deeper level inside you. You’re
able to draw from this abundance and share it freely with others. And you stop
trying to decide who is worthy of it, because you now know that you are not
“worthy” either. It is one hundred percent pure gift!
Simplicity
Purity
of Heart, Singleness of Focus
Sunday, June 28, 2020
My
food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work. —John 4:34
I cannot do
anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do
not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me. —John 5:30
My Father, if it
is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will. —Matthew 26:39
When
you read the above statements, it is quite clear that Jesus was entirely
single-hearted. His life was all about doing the will of the One who sent him,
the One he loved above all. To Jesus, it was that simple.
As
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) so beautifully put it, “purity of heart is to
will one thing.” [1] No wonder Jesus said that the pure of heart would see God
(Matthew 5:8). They alone keep their eyes in one constant and consistent
direction, and thus overcome the divisions created by the divided hearts and
loyalties which plague the rest of us. As we grow spiritually, our lives become
more and more centered and simple. There are only a few things that matter, and
eventually really only one.
Howard
Thurman (1899-1981), the esteemed theologian and spiritual teacher to Martin
Luther King, Jr., reached this point of single-hearted focus. The following
excerpt from his book Meditations of
the Heart reveals how Thurman prayed that God’s will
might be done in and through him.
The central
element in communion with God is the act of self-surrender. The symbol of my
prayer this day is the open heart. It is most natural for me to think of prayer
in terms of the open hand. My needs are so great and often so desperate that
there seems to be naught besides my own urgency. I must open my heart to God.
This will include my own deep urgencies and all the warp and woof of my
desiring. These things, deep within, I must trust with the full awareness that
more important even than self-realization is the true glorifying of God.
Somehow I must make God central to me and in me, over and above the use to
which I wish or need to put His energy and His power.
I surrender
myself to God without any conditions or reservations. I shall not bargain with
[God]. I shall not make my surrender piecemeal but I shall lay bare the very
center of me, that all of my very being shall be charged with the creative
energy of God. Little by little, or vast area by vast area, my life must be
transmuted in the life of God. As this happens, I come into the meaning of true
freedom and the burdens that I seemed unable to bear are floated in the current
of the life and love of God. [2]
Acknowledging the intrinsic value, beauty, and even soul of creation, elements, plants, and animals is a major paradigm shift for most Western Christians. In fact, many in the past often dismissed such thinking as animism or paganism. We limited God’s love and salvation to our own human species and, then, in this theology of scarcity, we did not even have enough love left to cover all of humanity! To be honest, God ended up looking quite stingy and inept—hardly “victorious,” as our Easter hymns claim.
The word profane comes from the Latin words pro, meaning “in front of,” and fanum, meaning “temple.” We thought we lived “outside the temple.” Without a nature-based spirituality, it was a profane universe, bereft of Spirit. We had to keep building shrines and churches to capture and hold our now domesticated and tamed God. Soon we did not know where to look for the divine, as we made God’s presence so limited. We became like fish swimming around looking for water, and often arguing about who owned the water!
I’m not saying that God is all things or that all things are God (pantheism). I am saying that each living thing reveals some aspect of God. God is greater than the whole of our universe, and as Creator inter-penetrates all created things (panentheism).
When God manifests spirit through matter, then matter becomes a holy thing. The material world is the place where we can comfortably worship God just by walking on it, loving it, and respecting it. Everything visible, without exception, is the outpouring of God. What else could it really be? The incarnation is not only “God becoming Jesus.” It is a much broader event, which is why John’s Gospel first describes God’s presence in the general word “flesh” (John 1:14). This is the ubiquitous Christ that we continue to encounter in other human beings, in a mountain, a blade of grass, a spider web, or a starling.
When we can enjoy all these things as holy, “the world becomes a communion of subjects more than a collection of objects” as the “geologian” Fr. Thomas Berry (1914–2009) said so wisely. [1]
When we love something, we grant it soul, we see its soul, and we let its soul touch ours. We must love something deeply to know its soul (anima). Before the resonance of love, we are largely blind to the meaning, value, and power of ordinary things to “save” us and help us live in union with the source of all being. In fact, until we can appreciate and even delight in the soul of other things, even trees and animals, we probably haven’t discovered our own souls either. Soul knows soul through love, which is why it’s the great commandment (Matthew 22:36).
Author and Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor has been writing about the intersection of faith and science for a long time. In this essay, written over twenty years ago, she was already exploring a new cosmology, one that honored her deep understanding of both God and the workings of the universe. She has the courage and conviction to ask hard questions and wrestle with them alongside us. Her insight into God’s unifying and enlivening presence has much in common with the mystics. As Franciscan theologian Bonaventure described, God is One “whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” [1]
In Sunday school, I learned to think of God as a very old white-bearded man on a throne, who stood above creation and occasionally stirred it with a stick. When I am dreaming quantum dreams, what I see is an infinite web of relationship, flung across the vastness of space like a luminous net. It is made of energy, not thread. As I look, I can see light moving through it as a pulse moves through veins. What I see “out there” is no different from what I feel inside. There is a living hum that might be coming from my neurons but might just as well be coming from the furnace of the stars. When I look up at them there is a small commotion in my bones, as the ashes of dead stars that house my marrow rise up like metal filings toward the magnet of their living kin.
Where am I in this picture? I am all over the place. I am up there, down here, inside my skin and out. I am large compared to a virus and small compared to the sun, with a life that is permeable to them both. Am I alone? How could I ever be alone? I am part of a web that is pure relationship, with energy available to me that has been around since the universe was born.
Where is God in this picture? God is all over the place. God is up there, down here, inside my skin and out. God is the web, the energy, the space, the light—not captured in them, as if any of those concepts were more real than what unites them—but revealed in that singular, vast net of relationship that animates everything that is.
At this point in my thinking, it is not enough for me to proclaim that God is responsible for all this unity. Instead, I want to proclaim that God is the unity—the very energy, the very intelligence, the very elegance and passion that make it all go. This is the God who is not somewhere but everywhere, the God who may be prayed to in all directions at once. This is also the God beyond all directions, who will still be here (wherever “here” means) when the universe either dissipates into dust or swallows itself up again.
My
friend and fellow CAC teacher Dr. Barbara Holmes has the ability to bear
witness to the expansiveness of the cosmos, the major systemic shifts taking
place in society, and the small and sacred moments of daily life—all at the
same time. Her writing is a poetic and prophetic call for us to wake up and pay
attention to everything that is happening around us.
It
is time to awaken to self, society, and the cosmos, for none of us has the
luxury of sleepwalking through impending cultural and scientific revolutions.
In the last sermon that he preached before he was assassinated, Martin Luther
King Jr. urged us to “remain awake through a great revolution.” [1] . . .
Up
above our heads, there are worlds unknown and a canopy of grace, light, air,
and water that supports our survival. Without realizing it, we expend massive
amounts of energy to block out the vastness of our universe. This is to be
expected, for, in its totality, this information can be more than human systems
can take. However, by riveting our attention on the mundane, we filter out the
wonder that is available with each breath.
Although
we have a fascination with space and the possibility of life in other realms,
we steadfastly refuse to respond when the universe invites us to broaden our
lines of sight. We are beckoned by blazing sunsets and the pictures returned by
powerful telescopic lenses, yet, on any given day, we court a busyness that
beguiles us into focusing on the limited perspectives in our immediate space.
Today,
scientific information about the universe is increasing exponentially while
ethnic and racial balances within the United States are shifting radically. In
the scientific realm, the epistemological foundations for hierarchy, dominance,
and rationality are crumbling, while proponents of gender, class, [racial,] and
sexual equity have found their public voices. . . .
We
are not hamsters on a wheel, waiting to fall into the cedar shavings at the
bottom of the cage. We are seekers of light and life, bearers of shadows and
burdens. We are struggling to journey together toward moral fulfillment. We are
learning to embrace the unfathomable darkness where God dwells with enthusiasm
that equals our love of light. Physics and cosmology have metaphors and
languages to help us awaken to these and other possibilities. . . . We are not
just citizens of one nation or another, but of the human and cosmic community.
Awareness
is the moment when we rise with eyes crusted from self-induced dreams of
control, domination, victimization, and self-hatred to catch a glimpse of the
divine in the face of “the other.” Then God’s self-identification, “I am that I
am / I will be who I will be” (Exodus 3:14) becomes a liberating example of
awareness, mutuality, and self-revelation.
Barbara teaches us that “everything
belongs”—from moments of personal awakening, to mind-bending discoveries with
the potential to change everything. Growing in awareness of a “Christ-soaked
universe” helps us to awaken to wonder and see the divine in all things.
It is hard to believe, but this month marks 50 years since I was first ordained in my home parish in Topeka, Kansas. It was a beautiful ordination ceremony. I was young and excited; my hair was long (I had hair!), and I wore colorful vestments covered with flowers I’d probably be embarrassed to wear now.
This was during the great years after Vatican II—the inspired spiritual renewal that had put the Gospel back at the center of our lives, just as St. Francis tried to do.
After the ceremony people were waiting in line to congratulate me, and I was feeling very important and holy. A woman held up the receiving line to tell me a story. I was irritated; as many others were in line. She told me about the history of my parish church, and how it was built on the very spot where the Pentecostal movement began. “You’re going to be used by the Holy Spirit,” she said. I tried to hurry her along, but nevertheless she persisted. And by she, I mean both this particular woman and the Holy Spirit—who has never given up on me.
Five decades later I am humbled to think about how it has all played out. I’ve written more books than I care to admit, prayed alongside amazing leaders and spoken in front of countless wonderful people. Through it all the Spirit has persisted in her work despite my many personal limitations and times I passionately believed my own message while also denying it in practice.
God always uses unworthy instruments so we can never think that it is we who are accomplishing the work. The older I get, the more I think, “God, you were so patient with me! I didn’t do it right and you still did it right, you still used me.”
2020 has been an unprecedented year—like nothing I have seen before. I believe we are seeing humanity awaken to a new level of awareness of systemic injustice in the world, the suffering it causes, and of the role each of us play in perpetuating these systems—predominantly by those of us with privilege and power. We would do well to remember that evil can only be substantially overcome by collective good. When one part is hurt, we all share in that pain, and if one part is liberated, we all share in the joy.
There is a great need right now for unworthy instruments—people who have done the necessary work to ground compassionate action in contemplative, non-dual consciousness. When you experience the reality of your oneness with God and Creation, actions of justice and love will naturally follow. This message has been at the core of what I set out to teach over the last fifty years, and now that I rarely leave my hermitage, these meditations have become my primary means of sharing what God is putting on my heart. It is my hope they have been a source of both healing and encouragement for you.
Tomorrow the Daily Meditations will continue exploring the important theme of Nature and the Cosmos.
Dear friends,
On June 13th, 1970, at the age of just 27, Fr. Richard began an incredible life of teaching and service to people all over the world. As a longtime student of Fr. Richard’s, it is an incredible privilege to partner with him and our whole Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) team each day.
We believe that a more loving, just, equitable and sustainable world is possible, but a new consciousness is necessary to get there. In the tradition of Jesus, St. Francis, and mystics from every tradition, our goal is to provide spiritual wisdom that supports both inner and outer transformation. Action and Contemplation are inextricable on the spiritual journey, especially during a time of worldwide disruption and pain.
As the CAC’s Executive Director my top priority is ensuring Fr. Richard and our other amazing teachers have the structural support they need to continue sharing their work through these daily meditations and our other programs. Because of our partnership with you, more and more people are being introduced to this wisdom. Thank you—there is no way he could do all of this alone, and there is no way wecould do all of this alone either.
We do our work in deep respect and awareness of the many other people and organizations playing their part to transform systems of oppression in the great body of Christ. Specifically, we stand in solidarity with activists around the world who are prophetically demanding justice for all Black people who have faced violence, anti-blackness and systemic racism. These are spiritual evils that impoverish us all and they demand our participation in a systemic response. Now more than ever we honor the needs in all of our communities, and we trust your discernment on how best to help. Thank you for any support you are able to offer our mission at this time.
Please consider making a one-time donation or a recurring gift. Your support allows us to keep these Daily Meditations free and accessible to an ever growing audience around the world. Will you contribute and support the future of this work? If you are able, please consider making your donation a monthly one. Monthly support helps create the stability we need to share this vital message to more people in more ways well into the future.
Our hope for this edition is to help us stand on the threshold and see beyond ourselves to the broader and more inclusive world that lies before us.
On this 50th anniversary of Richard’s Ordination, we honor his life and are deeply grateful to be on this journey together.
Peace and Every Good,
Michael Poffenberger Executive Director, Center for Action & Contemplation
P.S. Please consider making a contribution to the Center for Action and Contemplation (tax-deductible in the United States). We invite donations of any size. You can donate securely online at cac.org/dm-appeal or send a check (USD only) to CAC, PO Box 12464, Albuquerque, NM 87195. Learn more about charitable giving at cac.org/support. Read more of Fr. Richard’s thoughts on the systemic nature of Evil. Email us at development@cac.org if you are considering making a legacy or estate gift. Thank you.
It seems that for many people accepting the truth of science means rejecting the truth of God. Of course, it’s not an either/or proposition, but the two have been set in opposition for so long we could expect little else. There have been many religious scientists throughout the ages, but their work has often only been appreciated in hindsight. Thankfully, Pope Francis is working to correct that. A growing number of people like author and podcaster Mike McHargue are beginning to articulate how science and faith can be reconciled in our modern age. Here he explains in layperson’s terms how the evolutionary phenomenon we call the “Big Bang” is a reflection of what I would call the Paschal Mystery.
In the beginning, there was a rapid expansion of a Singularity. Around 380,000 years later, there was light. There was also hydrogen and helium and four stable, fundamental forces of physics. Atoms and those forces worked together to birth the first stars from massive clouds of gas, and those stars lived for hundreds of millions of years before they died in explosions that spread their matter across the sky in clouds of gas and dust—now with heavier elements than what existed before.
The forces of physics worked together once again to craft new stars now tightly packed into the first galaxies.
As the cycle repeated, heavier elements formed planets orbiting those stars, emerging from disks of gas and dust like dust bunnies under your bed. In our universe, planets can exist only because a few generations of stars died and were reborn. The rebirth of stellar matter into planets is how our Earth came to be.
This planet, our home, is covered with a film of life unlike any we’ve yet seen anywhere else in the universe. As far as we know today, it is unique. A blue marble floating in the dark.
Earth’s life is fed by a process in which carbon from the air and minerals in the soil are attached together by the energy of photons via photosynthesis in plants. In this process, everything on this planet lives by the constant sacrifice of the nearest star. Every blade of grass, every tree, every bush, every microscopic algae on this planet is a resurrected form of the Sun’s energy. . . .
One day, I will die, and in time my atoms will go back to giving life to something else. Much farther along the arrow of time, our own Sun will explode and spread its essence across the sky. Our Sun’s dust will meet with other stars’ remnants and form new stars and planets of their own. The universe itself exists in an eternal pattern of life, death, and resurrection.
It seems poetically appropriate that the Source of all would have left this divine signature on the fabric of reality. In Jesus, I hope for more than just a God with a face or a uniquely gifted moral teacher. I hope for a resurrection that will one day reach every corner of our universe.
The word cosmology has been used more frequently in recent years, even in religious circles. If cosmology is the study of the origin, processes, and shape of the universe, then it also involves the study of God, the universe’s Creator. I find it utterly enticing, but I also know how threatening it has been to Christian thought as a whole.
Up until Copernicus and Galileo, western cosmology was very linear and largely informed by faith, with little attention to science. With a kind of extended egocentricity, Christians thought the earth was the center of the universe. God dwelled on his throne (and God was considered male), Jesus somehow dwelled beneath God, with heaven, the earth, and hell set below in their fixed places. But after the Copernican revolution, scientists have discovered ever more galaxies, and demonstrated that we humans are not the center of anything. We are just a small part of a much bigger ecosystem and universe. It is a very humbling lesson that we are still adjusting to five hundred years later! From that revolutionary moment, religion and science largely stopped talking to one another and started going in two different directions.
At a minimum, we need a God as big as the still-expanding universe. Otherwise, many earnest people will continue to think of God as a mere add-on to a world that is already awesome. However, I believe our traditional faith has a key to open the door to a new cosmology. That key is the proper understanding of the word Christ.
Christ, as I like to say, is more than Jesus’ last name. Christ is God, and Jesus is the Christ’s historical manifestation in time. Jesus is a Third Someone, not just God and not just human, but God and human together.
If we cannot put these two seeming opposites of the divine and human together in Jesus Christ, we usually cannot put these two together in ourselves, or in the rest of the physical universe. A merely personal God becomes clannish and sentimental, and a merely universal God never leaves the realm of abstract theory and philosophical principles. But when we learn to put them together, Jesus and Christ give us a God who is both personal and universal. Jesus is a map for the time-bound and personal level of life, and Christ is the blueprint for all time and space and life itself.
When cosmology became largely a secular science, a large number of Christians felt free to reject evolution and history. Today, however, we are living in a wonderful time of convergence. We have a chance to bring them together again. As author Beatrice Bruteau (1930–2014) wrote: “We need a new theology of the cosmos, one that is grounded in the best science of our day . . . so that all the world turns sacred again . . .” [1] I hope this week’s meditations offer you a vision of a cosmology that is scientifically accurate and still entirely suffused with the presence of God.
This CO2- (Church Of 2) is where two guys meet each day to tighten up our Connections with Jesus. We start by placing the daily “My Utmost For His Highest” in this WordPress blog. Then we prayerfully select some matching worship music and usually pick out a few lyrics that fit especially well. Then we just start praying and editing and Bolding and adding comments and see where the Spirit takes us.
It’s been a blessing for both of us.
If you’d like to start a CO2, we’d be glad to help you and your partner get started. Also click the link below to see how others are doing CO2.Odds Monkey
Steve Harvey Introduces Jesus To A Secular Audience
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