Matter and spirit; Christ and charity

From the Teilhard de Chardin blog:

“What is finally the most revolutionary and fruitful aspect of our present age is the relationship it has brought to light between Matter and Spirit: spirit being no longer independent of matter, or in opposition to it, but laboriously emerging from it under the attraction of God by way of synthesis and centration.

But what is the effect, for Christian faith and mysticism, of this redefinition of the Spirit? It is simply to confer absolute reality and absolute urgency upon the double dogma on which the whole of Christianity rests, and by which it is summed up: the physical primacy of Christ and the moral primacy of Charity.”

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, p. 86

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The Rawness of God

The following was taken from molma.indigo – Musings from a Spiritual Wanderer

I finished reading Teilhard’s “Hymn of the Universe” (thank you William Ockham) about 2:30 AM this morning. I was so taken by the outpouring of emotion that I felt as I was reading it – I felt as if I were reading my thoughts on the page. It was as if Teilhard had somehow gotten into my head and what I was feeling he was so eloquently and passionately writing down and then he took those feelings to another height. I felt like I had been taken back into the womb of creation itself and I couldn’t put it down because it haunted me to continue. From the writing page 17:

“All of us, Lord, from the moment we are born feel within us this disturbing mixture of remoteness and nearness; and in our heritage of sorrow and hope passed down to us through the ages, there is no yearning more desolate than that which makes us weep with vexation and desire as we stand in the midst of the Presence which hovers about us nameless and impalpable and is dwelling in all things.”

Venezuelan Andes

Venezuelan Andes

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Happy 133rd Birthday to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, born May 1, 1881. Here is a picture of the house he was born in.

FTDC_002_2And here is a photo today of the font where he was baptized in the church of Our Lady of the Domes (local mountains) in the little town of Orcines.

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Letter from a “Happy Atheist”

Guest blog from Harry Ansems:

Our Individual Survival

In my younger years as a pupil of a grammar school I read  Teilhard de Chardin’s  The Human Phenomenon. Afterwards I never found a more inspiring book.  The idea of a natural inner force (the inside of all matter) which leads us all to an universal, transhuman consciousness has remained with me all along.  The consequence of growing consciousness for mankind is that we are on the way to a stage of utmost mental intensity and connection  (the Omega-Point).

In this whole idea I considered many times the need of so many people for a happy individual survival into eternity. I asked myself: If we will have this stage of supreme consciousness in the future, why should we then have need  of a limited human individuality such as we are now used to? I am convinced that all our worries about the survival of  our individual personality have to do with our still limited consciousness and our present state of mind. We humans are not yet prepared to think really in space and time, as we are still too much fixed on our temporal bodies. Should we for instance in our evolved world of consciousness regret that we did not survive in the form of our ape-like ancestor of that time  with his personal ape-body and his personal ape-mind?  Teilhard the Chardin foresaw that the deeper our inner forces are expanding the more we abstract from individuality and the more we tend to connectedness and  love.  Regarding this it is clear in my opinion that we also don’t  need a personal human-like fatherly God.  What we need is respect for the Inside of the whole nature and an open mind for science and altruïsm. In fact Teilhard made me a happy atheïst.

For more explanation visit my website:  www.transhumansociety.eu

Harry Ansems

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Death for Life

The following is an abbreviated re-blog of a post which can be found in its entirety (with illustrations) at http://ecospiritualityresources.com/blog/.

DID NOT THE CHRIST HAVE TO DIE?  (Luke 24:26)

Lent is transitioning into Holy Week and Easter — with Earth Day very soon thereafter — a good time to reflect on death and new life within the context of the new creation story. The chaos and seeming hopelessness of Good Friday, and the bitter cold and icy winter many have experienced, will both result in new life. It’s a cosmic pattern. Continue reading →

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