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Opening Reflection - Contemplative Chapter

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13 January 2009

OUR LIFE HIDDEN WITH CHRIST AT THE HEART OF THE COSMOSLooking at the theme for this Chapter I became aware that we have before us four stories

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the story of theuniverse and the earth, our Christian story and the story of our Family and within that the story of yourcontemplative vocation. All these stories are inter-related and we live in all of them and all of them areimportant for us. Of course they have different time spans from about 14 billion years to 150 years.However these stories are part of the context in which we live. They reveal to us who we are, they revealto us the mystery of God. They are interwoven into us, they are part of us, and they form and shape us.Yet each story is also different and can be viewed separately without losing sight of the fact that they alsoremain connected and interconnected. In a reflection such as this it is only possible to explore each onebriefly.

Our ancestry stretches back through the life forms and into the stars, back into the beginnings of the primeval fireball. This universe is a single multiform energetic unfolding of matter, mind, intelligence and life.

Caroline Webb says this in another way:

our bodies express all the history of life on this planet. And thehistory is also the history of every mountain, every river, every ocean, and every pond. And every millimetreof rock and soil, every wisp of water vapour and every breath of the atmosphere blowing ceaselessly around our globe. In our bodies flows the knowledge of an entire planet, an entire solar system, and the universe.It is nothing short of spectacular! What cause for celebration

What we are learning today about our Cosmos is astounding and often overwhelming for us. Now weknow, thanks to discoveries of science, that our cosmos is about 13.7 billion years old. At some point

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andno one knows when or how, the story of the Cosmos began in a single moment

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sometimes called the “bigbang” when all that was ever to be pa

rt of life was contained in that one single event. From that onemoment everything else began to evolve and unfold and continues to do so. A helpful image given to thismoment and quoted by Cletus Wessels in

Jesus and the new

Universe story

is “

the everything seed

”. You

and I, every living being, every plant and animal, every star and planet, mountain and plain, river andocean, rock and stone has its beginnings there in

the “seed” of

that first moment. We are intimatelyconnected to one another and to all creation because we all share the one starting point and we are allmade up of the same material

Our life is rooted in and connected to all life

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all that has been, all that will be. We are participants in a single on-going act of creation

We reco

gnise that the cosmos has being imbued with God’s

compassionate, loving presence from the verybeginning; that the cosmos is

that through which God communicates something of the invisible Way to us inendless visible ways. A visible expression of invisible Love.

The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos

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Brian Swimme, professor of mathematical cosmology

Weaving a World with light

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Caroline Webb, professor of philosophy and cosmology

Radical Amazement

–

Judy Cannato, spiritual director

The Cosmic Mystic

–

Henry A Garon, professor of Physics

2And we state in our Corporate Commitment that

the light of the new cosmic vision that opens before us,we realise that all forms of life in the universe exist in total interdependence and as an intimately inter-related whole of which humans form a part. We are now conscious that communion embraces not only our sisters and brothers in humanity, but the entire cosmic family

The

planet

earth story

began about 4.6 billion years ago having been formed and shaped during a longprocess. The first sign of life began as single cell bacteria. Much later our origins as humans can be tracedback to about 1.9 million years ago. And in more recent times, with our very short history on this earth andshorter still in the Cosmos, we thought we were the centre of the earth and all the rest was for our use andbenefit. We now know just how wrong we are and how close we have come to destroying a system thatlived without us for billions of years.There are many important points regarding the earth in the Earth Charter 2000. Here I simply want totouch on a couple that affirm that concern for the common good is vital if we are to respond to the growingcrisis of the earth. It states clearly that we must develop a new sense of global interdependence andshared responsibility for the wellbeing of the earth, of all human beings and of creation. Some of the valuesunderlined are collaboration, participation, right relationships and non-violence. Concern for human rights,for the poor, the vulnerable and the weak are at the centre of the Charter. In all of this we can seereflection of our Charism and spirituality and our own awakening to this big reality. Our CorporateCommitments of 1999, 2002, and 2008 show our growing understanding and our options to be promotersof life, of sustainability, of right relationships, of communion with the entire cosmic family.

Through us, the universe is awakened to its Source, a mystery of transforming Love, inviting us into a holy communion to unify and heal the world. How we as human species, and how we as communities of faithwill respond can make an incalculable difference. The future of planet earth is in our hands.

To choose life today calls us to an awareness of a new world view and urges us to a change of mentality, soas to understand, feel and situate ourselves in a new way of relating to God, to the earth and all of creation.(Corporate Commitment 2008)

Our

Christian story

began 2000 years ago, although its roots can be traced back to 4000 years ago as it’s

intimately linked with the Jewish story. At a particular moment in time God who has been active andcreative within the world since the first moment chose to identify more visibly with our world throughChrist.

The incarnation has made it possible for us to achieve higher levels of appreciation for everything,everywhere.

Thus we can say that everything is related to Christ and therefore everything in our world isprecious

. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together

… in him all the ful

lness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile all things (

Col 1:17, 19-20)

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came intobeing through him. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. (John1:1-4)

Making the Shift

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Seeing Faith through a New Lens, Elaine Prevallet, SL, Professor of theology and retreat director

The Cosmic Mystic

Father glorify me in your presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.(John17:5)

So the invitation today is to live with contemplative hearts that recognise something of God in everythingand every being.

From our own small story I would like to recall the words heard by Milady Peychaud, atthe moment of the miraculous Benediction, words also heard by Moses, when God is revealed to him as IAM WHO I AM (Exodus 3:14)

I Am the One who is

… can

we not say that here is an affirmation that everything is in God and God is ineverything? That the concept of God and of existence goes together as one? That they cannot beseparated, so everything is sacred when viewed

through the lens of our God who proclaims “

I am the Onewho is

”?

verything reveals something of the mystery of God who is “

I AM

” but we need contemplative

eyes, ears and hearts to catch a glimpse of the endless mystery of God revealed in diversity and unity, incomplexity and simplicity, in small and large, in the ordinary and the extraordinary, in vulnerability andstrength. So when we live from a contemplative stance we can delight and wonder at all these countlessrevelations of the

“I

” of God

.Or yet again we can hear Jesus tell us

I am the way

, the way we treat one another is the way we treat him.And with our understanding today we could say that the way we treat any part of creation is the way wetreat Christ. That for Christ,

Love

is the key to our way of being in the world because Love is God andtherefore it is

LOVE

that holds all things in existence.Margaret Wheatley says:

What gives power its charge, positive or negative, is the quality of relationships.Those who relate through coercion, or from disregard for the other person, create negative energy. Thosewho are open to others and who see others in their fullness create positive energy, Love in organizations,then, is the most potent source of power we have available.

So we gradually grow in our awareness that we identify with Christ in whatever we are doing.

In Christianeyes the greatest miracle ever to occur was the incarnation wherein God personally identified with creationso as to make everything understandable in terms of divinity, and divinity understandable in terms of everything everywhere. The ineffable miracle is that of having our eyes opened so as to see that ordinary creation is alive with the grandeur of love-expression, forgiveness, the promise of everlasting life. Whoever believes in things like these is already living the miraculous.

And we who have responded to the call to follow Jesus are invited to see Christ in all things. Or in our ownlanguage

to love, seek and desire only God Alone in all things.In true Christian awareness, each thing in its own way bears a closeness to Christ. And Christ communicatesto us through each of them a mode of his abiding presence, his truth, his love, his companionship and availability, his wonder, his hope, his promise. Each creature is understandable in the light of its particular charisma, in terms of what makes things real. It is here that we find the mystical presence of Christ, the

Leadership and the New Science

–

Margaret Wheatley

Cosmic Mystic