What is Emerging?
Posted on June 1, 2024, by Mary Ellen McElroy SL
One of the great visionaries of planet Earth is the Jesuit priest-scientist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Much of what we have learned about the Universe and the new cosmology comes from his teaching. One of those amazing truths is that the stuff of the Universe is spirit-matter! And what grew out of that concept is the basis of a cosmic spirituality. Another exciting discovery is now a common belief: What is emerging in us is the great cosmos.*
Elaine Prevallet, SL, in her booklet, “Making the Shift,”** shares her personal experience of integrating Chardin’s cosmology in her own being. The shift that she talks about is the transition that human beings are making as our collective consciousness expands. Elaine’s gift to us is her ability to express new concepts in words that make it easier for most of us to grasp. She begins each section of “Making the Shift” with her own reflections. Here are a couple of her ponderings:
“That we can try to imagine the Big Bang, that we can try to imagine ourselves as the result of eons of evolutionary history, that we can try to imagine Earth’s groping forward toward self-organization, toward life forms that will try to understand how they are related to all that has gone before and what that means for their self-definition: This is amazing.”
And: “In us the Universe is becoming conscious of its capacity to be in communion with the Holy Mystery that lies at the Source of our being.”
Elaine’s question for us is: What might it mean for us humans to understand ourselves as the Universe beginning to be conscious of itself as the Universe, as an interconnected whole? How would you answer this question?
In the final chapter, “THE WAY FORWARD,” Elaine challenges and inspires us with incredible insights regarding “what we must do.” As we plan for the Delegate Assembly in July, reading and pondering this chapter would be excellent preparation for all of us.
*Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), taken from “A Book of Hours,” edited by Kathleen Deignan CND, and Libby Osgood CND (2023). Used with permission.
** “Making the Shift, Seeing Faith Through a New Lens,” Elaine M. Prevallet SL, 2007. Quotes used with permission.
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