Heartfelt thanks to our Teilhard Project colleague Jacqueline Francois for placing this wreath at the grave of Teilhard de Chardin in Hyde Park, NY. She and her husband, Pierre, and several of their friends have been landscaping the site for a number of years. Sadly, Pierre died suddenly this past year, but Jacqueline and the others will continue to tend Teilhard’s grave. In sending this photo, Jacqueline notes that this year, “Unfortunately the strong pelting rain had stirred up the soil kicked aside by Alex, the devoted woodchuck!”
On New Years Day, 1932, Teilhard was encamped with 30 or so colleagues who had been traveling together under difficult circumstances for the previous nine months. They were on the last leg of the journey and were eager to be home. Teilhard invited them to join him at sunrise for a religious service. Many of them were not believers, but they nevertheless all joined him.
As the sun came up he began,
“My dear friends, we have met this morning to come before God at the beginning of this new year. Of course, probably, for not one of us here does God mean, or seem, the same thing as for any other of us.”
Then he went on to pray, “What we ask of that universal presence which envelops us all, is first to unite us, as in a shared, living, center with those whom we love, those who, so far away from us here, are themselves beginning this same new year.”
In the spirit of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, we wish you and all those you love, wherever they may be, a joyful new year with a renewed zest for life!
Frank and Mary Frost
