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April 15, 2024: Is the World Love as Teilhard Teaches?
Teilhard de Chardin mentioned that we must always add to the instructing “God is Love” a instructing that “The World is Love.” Is he being naive or is he onto one thing? Teilhard was a passionate advocate of evolution, and it value him a lot professionally. He was banished to China, however that point proved to be very wealthy as he made substantial contributions to the thrilling archeological findings of “Peking Man.” In his pursuit of the deeper which means of evolution, he realized that the world is love. World, Creation, Universe, Cosmos—it’s all love. As Matthew says: We have been beloved into existence. Existence is uncommon. Life and consciousness is uncommon. And evolution introduced it about.
April 16, 2024: Aquinas & Teilhard Envisioning the World as Love
Teilhard says that we have to consider the world as Love. In the meantime, Thomas Aquinas calls the Universe the being that’s “most like God.” If the world is “most like God” then it’s Love. Citing the psalmist, Aquinas says that the Universe is “God’s dwelling” and its splendor and grandeur render us “drunk” once we meditate on it. He borrows the “getting drunk” motif from the Music of Songs, the ebook within the Bible that celebrates human love and lovemaking as a theophany, a mystical expertise. Love of the Universe and from the Universe renders us drunk, drunk with love.
April 17, 2024: Aquinas on Love within the Universe, the World as Love
Our dwelling shouldn’t be a straightforward place to stay. There may be struggling, loss, conflict, dying. However there may be additionally love. There may be goodness and pleasure and forgiveness and beginning over and redemption. And certainly there may be magnificence. We’re, like different beings within the Universe, “merely one a part of the complete integrity of the Universe arising from” a kinship of all beings that make up one stunning entire which we name the cosmos. It seems that the Universe is divinized insofar as all beings in the complete cosmos “share in some divine presents.” (Aquinas)
April 18, 2024: Jews of Conscience Talking Out on Brutality to Palestinians
Now we have been reflecting on the idea of the world as love, however clearly human beings don’t all the time mannequin divine love. Nonetheless, typically there are folks and actions which carry us hope. For example, not too long ago the Basis for Ethics and That means shared a “Declaration of Collective Atonement on the A part of Jews of Conscience.”* Right here is a part of the declaration: We’re heartsick to the core about all of the tens of 1000’s of treasured lives being misplaced proper now in Gaza, so lots of them kids who had their entire lives in entrance of them.…We deeply bemoan all of the numerous losses, traumas, indignities, acts of dehumanization, humiliation, oppression, terror, and violence that Palestinian and Jewish folks have suffered, not simply since October seventh, however within the century since this far too long-standing battle started. To the Palestinian folks particularly: phrases can not adequately convey how profoundly sorry we’re, as Jews, for the function our folks have performed (in your struggling.)
April 19, 2024: Extra on Love & Collective Atonement from Jews of Conscience
Teilhard de Chardin talks about how the route of evolution is one in the direction of extra love, an enlargement of the universe’s capability to like. And Aquinas says that “sheer pleasure” is the origin of the universe and that goodness, pleasure and love are increasing within the universe. However yesterday we lamented the good hole between the love of the universe and love between human beings. Fortuitously, “Jews of Conscience” are stepping up and modeling loving motion within the face of a completely brutal and horrifying conflict. Extra excerpts from their declaration follows: Jewish custom teaches us to like the stranger, for we have been strangers as soon as ourselves, as slaves in Egypt…. On this time of deep despair, all of us, non secular and secular, should now come collectively to make this land holy, by studying to like each other with all our hearts—reflecting the love of all sacred creation. To make our peoples examples of the best good of which human beings are succesful, relatively than of its basest evil, we should be taught to develop collectively in new methods that may carry to all the popularity and peace we deserve and want.
April 20, 2024: Earth Day & Passover 2024: Heschel on Passover
Earth Day and Passover fall on the identical day this 12 months. Perhaps there’s a deep which means behind honoring Earth’s Liberation and the Israelites’ Liberation on the identical Holy Day this Spring. Passover is about not solely the angel of dying passing over Jewish houses marked with the blood of a sacrificed lamb, but in addition a time of exodus from their enslavement in Egypt. Rabbi Heschel reminds us that “the last word concern of the Jew shouldn’t be private salvation however common redemption.” Certainly, “God is ready for us to redeem the world.” Is liberation for Mom Earth and all her creatures doable? Can an exodus from the slavery of anthropocentrism and human narcissism occur anew this Earth Day? In that case, that may be a Passover par excellence.
*See “A Declaration of Collective Atonement on the A part of Jews of Conscience” at The Shalom Middle.
Banner picture: “Peace.” Picture by Bart on Flickr.
Really useful Studying
Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Imaginative and prescient of Love and Motion
By Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jen Listug
Within the midst of world fireplace, earthquake and flood – as species are going extinct on daily basis and nationwide and international economies totter – the planet doesn’t want one other church or faith. What it wants is a brand new Order, grounded within the Knowledge traditions of each East and West, together with science and indigenous. An Order of the Sacred Earth united in a single sacred vow: “I promise to be the most effective lover and defender of the Earth that I could be.”
Co-authored by Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jennifer Berit Listug, with a ahead by David Korten, this assortment of essays by 21 religious visionaries together with Brian Swimme, Mirabai Starr, Theodore Richards, and Kristal Parks marks the founding of the various and inclusive Order of the Sacred Earth, a neighborhood now evolving world wide.
“The Order of the Sacred Earth not solely calls us dwelling to our true nature as Earth, but in addition provides us invaluable steerage and firm on the way in which.” ~~ Joanna Macy, environmental activist and writer of Lively Hope.
Sheer Pleasure: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox renders Thomas Aquinas accessible by interviewing him and thus descholasticizing him. He additionally translated lots of his works similar to Biblical commentaries by no means earlier than in English (or Italian or German of French). He offers Aquinas a discussion board in order that he could be heard in our personal time. He presents Thomas Aquinas fully in his personal phrases, however in a kind designed to permit late Twentieth-century minds and hearts to listen to him in a contemporary method.
“The instructing of Aquinas comes by will a fullness and an perception that has by no means been current in English earlier than and [with] a significant message for the world as we speak.” ~ Fr. Bede Griffiths (Afterword).
Foreword by Rupert Sheldrake
One River, Many Wells: Knowledge Springing from International Faiths
Matthew Fox calls on all of the world traditions for his or her knowledge and their inspiration in a piece that’s way over an inventory of theological place papers however a brand new option to pray—to meditate in a worldwide religious context on the knowledge all our traditions share. Fox chooses 18 themes which are foundational to any spirituality and demonstrates how all of the world religious traditions supply knowledge about every.“Studying One River, Many Wells is like getting into the wealthy silence of a masterfully directed retreat. As you learn this textual content, you mirror, you pray, you embrace Divinity. Actually no phrases can absolutely categorical my respect and awe for this magnificent contribution to up to date spirituality.” –Caroline Myss, writer of Anatomy of the Spirit
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