Mindful Matter

Consciousness is the ground of being.  What happens in our minds is not an accident.  The universe is made up of mindful matter.  What we are conscious of really does matter.  What gave rise to the beginning of life itself, what some have called the Big Bang, and others call the Big Birth, was the awakening consciousness of the Prime Being.  This is the One theologians call God.  

The mind acts the synthesizer of consciousness and each of our minds are active in the creation of the cosmos.  We differ in how conscious we are of this fact.  Matter has an inner psychic component and an outer loving component.  These two components are what scientists call radial energy and attractive energy.  Love is the deepest of all cosmological forces.  Love in this sense is more than a sentimental emotion and more than erotic attraction.  It is the kind of love the ancient Greeks called agape.   

Love is the most powerful energy we know.  Love is what leads all matter into being and it generates more love in the process.  Love not confined to the human arena, but tied into the very structure of our world, our universe and the entirety of time and space.  Religion points to the deeper meaning of love.  Far from being at odds with science and evolution, the world’s religions are intrinsic to a higher level of human understanding and conscious participation in the cosmic mystery. 

Reflections from Ilia Delio retreat based on her new book  A Hunger for Wholeness: Soul, Space, and Transcendence. 

Life Seeking Life

 

Nature has a playful spontaneity.  It is a dynamic process not a static object.  In the thirty volume encyclopedia of life on earth, our earliest ancestor, our oldest cousin, is bacteria.  Int his encyclopedia, Volume 1 is the Big Bang.  The conscious awakening of God in nature is the Alpha moment, as Christians call it.  The Belgian Catholic priest Georges Lemaître proposed in 1927.  He built his theory to explain the observed redshifts of spiral nebulae, and calculated the Hubble law based on the work of Einstein.  

Many people do not know it was a Catholic priest who invented the Big Bang theory.  Since this is true, how could the evolution of the universe be out of sync with Christian theology?  It is not a new age idea separate from theological understanding of the universe.  Since God is love, and love is not dead, God is alive in the scientifically proven reality of the expanding universe. 

Humanity only appeared in the last volume of this encyclopedia, so clearly there is more going on in God’s awakening than the human species.   There is more to come.  "There are more things in heaven and earth ... than are dreamt of in your philosophy."   

Scientists observe that life seeks life and becomes increasing complex and more conscious of living as it evolves.  Evolution is the story of the process that brought all of nature to life and is still birthing new life.  Life emerges toward newness.  Our attention is misdirected when we think, "Who am I?"  The fundamental question is not what we are, but what we are becoming.   

Evolution of life is not a linear progression, but something far more complex.  When our consciousness, or level of awareness, changes, we become something new.  This is not just happening in our minds.   Matter is not separate from consciousness, it derives from it.  Life is evolving, and we know it for a fact.

Reflections from Ilia Delio retreat based on her new book  A Hunger for Wholeness: Soul, Space, and Transcendence. 

Human Consciousness

The current shift in cosmology and theology has personal implications for me as a coordinator of spiritual care services in a large public hospital in Silicon Valley.  The ministry that used to be called pastoral care was based on the idea of a Christian pastor acting as the Good Shepherd tending a flock of poor creatures who had lost their way.   

This ministry still holds value but it has been transformed and augmented into a more diverse and egalitarian approach we call spiritual care.  Teilhard de Chardin, Henry Nouwen and numerous influential women were part of the shift in the underpinnings of a Catholic view of the cosmos that caused a radical rethinking of the theological stance for pastoral care.   

Gestures and rituals that grew out of an outdated geocentric and male dominant world view have been set aside to outfit the current age for the journey ahead.  There is a pathway out of the frozen theological tundra that leaves many without hope and without energy to thrive.  A new world view that reconciles Trinitarian theology with the cosmological mystery is taking place in real time.  Human consciousness is ultimately the key to redemption and salvation.  That consciousness must take into consideration the scientific understanding of time and space and the way life develops in the cosmos.

Reflections from Ilia Delio retreat based on her new book  A Hunger for Wholeness: Soul, Space, and Transcendence.