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INCARNATION REVISITED

Jun18

INCARNATION REVISITED: GROWING INTO ECOSPIRITUALITY

 

This guest blog by Judy Talvaccia* is adapted from Judy’s article in the newsletter of the Holy Child Associates, USA. Judy responds to a reflection about the spirit of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus (SHCJ), the congregation started by Cornelia Connelly  cc_round (http://www.mayfieldsenior.org/about/Cornelia-Connelly), of which Judy is an Associate — and I am a member. Readers will relate to her experiences with ecospirituality and also find enrichment for understanding Pope Francis’ enclyclical Laudato Si. 

The SHCJ Charism 

A charism is defined as “a specific grace, a free gift granted for the common good, for building up the Body and Kingdom of Christ in love.” Our wildly generous God gives an abundance of gifts to individuals and to communities – all in the service of bringing about the fullness of God’s reign of love.

The gift given to Cornelia, and through her to the SHCJ and to us, lies in the name Society of the Holy Child Jesus. The Incarnation roots and grounds us in the merciful God who became human as a vulnerable child. Through the Holy Child, we understand that nothing is too humble or hidden for divinity not to be present and active. The charism helps us to see God in the most unexpected people, places and things and to respond to the sacred presence we recognize.

Early Religious Education 

mary-baby-jesusMy religious education began in the pre-Vatican II Church. I learned  that the Incarnation was “God the Father sending his son down from heaven to save human beings from our sins.” In my experience, the focus of the Incarnation was on the person; that is, Jesus became human to free me and all human beings from the consequences of sin. That resonated with me since, from a very young age, I was sensitive to the needs of others and fascinated by what makes people tick, what makes them who they are.

I loved learning about other cultures – how different people can be and yet how much we have in common. That may be part of the reason why the charism of the SHCJ attracted me. It spoke to something very deep in me about finding God in anyone and everyone. I learned, as the article says, that “…nothing truly human is foreign.” Although I enjoyed and appreciated the non-human world, my passion was always people.

Creation Spirituality 

The recent insights of science and of creation spirituality have deeply challenged my lived experience of the Incarnation. My head tells me that much of what I am learning makes perfect sense. But try as I might, I don’t feel as passionate about ecological projects as I do about, for example, supporting children in the Dominican Republic. Even so, God has been drawing me slowly but surely towards a more expansive understanding of the Incarnation.

Two thoughts in the article spoke to me about the strategy God seems to be using in my spiritual journey. The idea that we have responsibility, not just for humans, but for “all that touches the human” has ignited my curiosity about what those things are and how they affect people. God is showing me that if I want to support people, I cannot do it without supporting the natural world.

But God draws me even deeper to see that “the expansion of our very selves, as well as of all creation are inextricably intertwined.” I am realizing that humans need to support the well being of the natural world for its own sake as well, if Love’s reign is to be accomplished. All of God’s creation needs to flourish!

 The Cosmic Christ 

The biggest stumbling block for me, however, is the concept of the Cosmic Christ weepingmotherofgodofthesignatnovgorod– the Christ who came to save the entire universe, the Christ whose Body includes all of creation. I believe in the resurrected Christ, living and active, but my image of him is still the man portrayed in the Gospels. I don’t want to give up a personal relationship with Jesus! I can’t relate to him as a disembodied cosmic force.

Fortunately, Jesus has been patiently teaching me and drawing me closer to his resurrected life. When I traveled to the Holy Land, I was struck by the commercialism of many of the pilgrim sites. It was hard at times to identify with Jesus in his life on this earth, in the face of so many distractions. I complained in prayer, “Why did I come here if I can’t be immersed in what your earthly life was like?” Jesus directed my attention to the reality around me as if to say, “I’m happy that you came to the land where I lived, but I also want you to see me as I exist today – in the people, places and things around you; this is my Body today!” Since then, I have become more aware of the risen Christ who lives and acts in all of creation. And to my surprise, the more I do that, the closer I feel to Jesus and to the God he embodies.

OroValleyWildFlowersOf course, it’s still a challenge – sometimes in the most unexpected ways. I was on retreat and walking along a beautiful country road. Wild flowers were in bloom everywhere. While admiring them, I thought about how Christ is present in each of them. But I could feel my spirit resist. “I don’t want a relationship with a flower petal when I want to be close to you, Jesus.” With sublime irony, Jesus responded to my spirit, “Don’t you experience a deeply personal connection with me in the Eucharistic bread and wine?” Touché!

Embracing the Unfolding Mystery 

So I willingly and joyfully, but with a hint of trepidation, join the Sisters in “embracing on a fresh level the mystery of Incarnation and Creation as united revelation of the greatness and goodness and Allness of God.” I am grateful for the confidence to respond generously to God’s invitation; to explore new facets of the Incarnation with trust that God is leading me to fuller life and love. I commit myself to be one of the “ones chosen now to make known the reality of the Incarnation ever being revealed and newly understood.”
Cake 1-3

*Judy Talvacchia is a chaplain and spiritual director in Boston, MA.

If you relate to Judy’s experiences, please share in Comments.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and World Environment Day

May25

The following guest blog was written by counseling and educational psychologist Clare Pierson (http://www.hesed.net.nz/) who lives in Mawhera Greymouth, Aotearoa New Zealand. Welcome, Clare!

As World Environment Day (June 5) approaches, I ask myself these questions:
“Who am I? Where am I standing?  What is my unique task?” 

collarThe writings of one Jesuit — the mystic, scientist, and theologian who set alight the spark first enkindled in me by my childhood immersion in the bushes, the flowers, fish, birds  and animals, the creeks, rivers, lakes and ocean of my home on the West Coast of the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand — provide the foundation for my responses. The radiant warmth of his face and the way in which his writings gave words to my felt experiences of the Divine have influenced my thinking and life for over 50 years.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, born 1 May 1881 in Sarcenat, France, died on Easter Sunday, 10 April 1955. Just three years before, as a teenager, I was inspired and filled with relief by what he wrote in Le Milieu Divin. Concerns about the environment had not reached the prominence then that have developed since his death, but what he wrote  provides a sound basis for caring for our Earth and all beings in her.1863405355_75e91f0db5_b

  In the beginning was the Power, intelligent, loving, energising.
In the beginning was the Word, supremely capable of mastering
and moulding whatever might come into being in the world of matter.
In the beginning there was not coldness and darkness: there was the Fire!
This is the truth. It is the Light, existing before all else was made,
Which patiently, surely eliminates our  darkness.
(The Mass on the World)

The Origin of Love

Trinity, Love (1 John 4), a perichoresis, a dance of Beings in love, a Communion or Community of love before time and space erupted into being. Love by nature gives, love flows out beyond the self and brings new life – there was the great flaring forth of Love from this Community of Love that began the ongoing creation of all that is. All energy in the universe is the love of the Source of all Being poured out and manifested as matter and energy/spirit/mind. The universe spoken by the Word Incarnate, began to develop 13.7 billion years ago and continues to be expressed in ongoing evolution. All communions, past present and to come, are one communion.

Every being in the universe, from the smallest particle to the most intelligent human, has a “within” (subjectivity, interiority – spirit, autopoesis, type of sentience or consciousness) and a “without” (outside – matter). Spirit and matter are but different manifestations of the same thing and one can change into the other.

Evolution’s Trajectory

According to Teilhard, from the very beginning there was the potential for life, for the development of increasing consciousness, and a trajectory in the unfolding of the universe, of Earth, being drawn forward from the future by the Christ, the Omega. If there were not, there would be no life, no consciousness and no trajectory now. Every being, everything in our environment, is sacred, worthy of respect and nothing is profane in Earth.

For the Christian believer, the universal consecration, the universal communion concentrates all effort and work on earth, all suffering on earth, in a convergence upon God and the reality of Jesus the Christ, Omega. Teilhard wrote that the most compelling and profound way of describing the evolution and trajectory of the universe would be to trace the evolution of love from the flaring forth of Love at the beginning of time and space to a unity of all beings drawn by Love from the future by Christ Omega into one Community of Love in Christ – in God. All beings, not just human beings, are One and are sacred.

Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world
Seek each other so that the world may come into being.
(Cosmos to Cosmogenesis)

So who am I and where am standing this World Environment Day?  

1455203_10152336992358332_1008870851_nI am a sacred being brought forth from Earth by Earth with an interiority and a body — spirit and matter — one whole, unique being caught up in a web of being, of life that is totally interconnected in relationship. I stand on and in earth as a being who owes my existence to all the evolutionary processes and who was brought forth by all the beings who came before me. I am part of the ecosystems of this land, dependent on the ecological sustainability of my environment, of all beings in it and of Earth as a whole.

I belong to the first species
– that was and is the Universe able to reflect on itself and
– that is able to make free choices that can affect — for good or ill — every other being in the universe.

What is my unique task? 

I and my fellow humans possess an enormous responsibility to continue that trajectory of love in the evolving universe. My unique task is
– to become who I really am
– to live according to the dynamic processes of the universe and in relationship with all other beings;
– to promote the health of the earth, myself and other beings;
– to avoid doing anything destructive of Earth, myself and other beings;
– to allow myself to be allured by, drawn consciously within the radiant beings all around me;
– to deepen contemplative oneness with Love in all that is.

Each day I need to become more attuned to the numinosity, the radiance of everything around me, to “see” in the essential way as described by Teilhard, and at the same time to seek out knowledge, to be mindful of being one with what Teilhard calls the noosphere, the “envelope of human thought around Earth,” to ensure that I am ever open to responding to where the Christ Omega is drawing me forward from the future.

Teilhard prayed:
O God, I wish from now on to be the first to become conscious
Of all that the world loves, pursues and suffers.
I want to be the first to seek, to sympathise and suffer;
The first to unfold and sacrifice myself to become
More widely human and more nobly of the earth
Than any of the world’s servants.

God who is Love, may I, may we, filled with your gifted fire of Love, Light, and Life, follow in the same footsteps as Teilhard, drawn by Christ Omega, as we live in life enhancing ways for all beings, all Earth, the whole universe.  Amen.

Who Are We (Becoming)?

May15

Decades ago I heard a talk by Daniel C. Maguire that included a thought that deeply impressed me: that the missing link between apes and true humans is actually us! In Maguire’s Christianity Without God, I learned that this shape-shifting concept came from biblical scholar Gerd Theissen.

imagesI also like the title of an article by Walter J. Ong, SJ: “Where Are We Now?” Given all we’ve learned from physicists and cosmologists, we are not where, or who, we thought we were a century ago. The new context bumps us from our former self-understanding.

Our self-identity plays a key role not just in personal issues, but in the epochal transition of our time, as we leave one era and co-create the next one. Consider an insight found in Changing Images of Man (O.W. Markey and Willis W. Harman) that posits four levels of reality. Too often humans focus on identifying problems and how we deal with them. But this depends on what motivates us, which in turn results from our basic values and worldviews, the overarching stories that determine how we identify ourselves and others, including the divine and creation itself.

Willis and Markey use different sizes of wavy lines, but their insights work without them:

1. Substantive problems: What we see (e.g., poverty, pollution,
climate  change . . . .)

2. Process Problems: How we deal with these problems (e.g., deny, ignore, respond)

3. Normative Problems: What motivates us (e.g.,  acquiring wealth, concern for creation)

4. Conceptual Problems: What forms our values and motivations; What are our basic perceptions (e.g., our cosmic view, sense of identity, image of the divine, how these are interconnected)

The many creation stories of the major faith traditions (level 4) began when knowledge was intuitive: flat earth with a level above it, a level below it. No one questioned the true age of creation. Believers today must adjust their identities to the world as we now know it. Change challenges the mind and heart — but change we must, and the Mystery given many names is active within us to assist when/if we are open.

To start with perceptions of self: If our basic story convinces us that we are
– isolated from, and superior to, the rest of creation,
– on Earth temporarily to care only for humans, and
– here to earn a place in heaven above,
that percolates up into our values and decisions. As a result, we might not protect the  climate, air, water, soil, and other species upon which all life depends. We might  miss the new awareness that humans, divinity, and all creation form one distinct but interacting community that has evolved over billions of years. We might not appreciate that we are stardust webbed with the rest of known creation!

Berry3 for website Small wonder that Thomas Berry called for the reinvention of humanity at the species level! He famously said: The great work of our times is moving the human community from its present situation as a destructive presence on the planet to a benign or mutually enhancing presence.

Might this describe “true humans”? How did Jesus contribute to this reinvention?

Willow Harth expresses this new identity poetically. Despite her title, this is definitely for each of us:


This poem is not meant for you

This poem is not for you
unless you too have been underground
choking on your life’s debris, and
playing peek-a-boo with death seriously

then the surprise of ten thousand buttercups buttercup_field
out of nowhere on every side where they’d
never been before on my daily walk
might have had the effect on you it did on me

because suddenly

I wanted to understand how these particular
flowers came to be — the whole evolutionary
history of mosses, ferns, and angiosperms,
the miracle of photosynthesis and DNA, not

to mention the longings of the Milky Way
to reflect itself in the form called flowers and
in these buttercups, which seemed like a
visitation from the sun, urging me to tell you, in
case like me you had forgotten

we are the universe’s latest way of blooming.