We are meditating on God as Love and the World as Love—the latter being a statement proposed by Teilhard de Chardin in light of the history of evolution that, in his view, has been a history of increased consciousness and awareness of the Love that the universe bestows on us.
How the direction of evolution is one towards more love, an expansion of the universe’s capacity to love. This seems to parallel the teaching of Thomas Aquinas that “sheer joy” is the origin of the universe and goodness, joy and love are expanding in the universe.
But in yesterday’s DM we lamented the great gap between the love of the universe and love between human beings. The wars of today in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan remind us of how readily humanity forgets the love of the world taught and symbolized by Jesus and the presence of the Cosmic Christ and Buddha Nature and Tselem, that names the image of God in all humanity and all creation.
In yesterday’s meditation we shared the lament from “Jews of Conscience” for the tragic war going on in Gaza and indeed in recent history between Jews and Palestinians. That declaration* continues here:
It has been a tragic, blood-filled irony that children of the very Abrahamic religions which emerged to declare that God-Allah is ONE, that all people are equally sacred members of ONE glorious creation, and that the key source of security in our world comes not from powerful empires but from the spirit that allows human beings to evolve beyond mere tribalism, have been agonizingly at one another’s throats time and time again on the very land that gave birth to them.
Jewish tradition teaches us to love the stranger, for we were strangers once ourselves, as slaves in Egypt….
In this time of deep despair, all of us, religious and secular, must now come together to make this land holy, by learning to love one another with all our hearts–reflecting the love of all sacred creation. To make our peoples examples of the highest good of which human beings are capable, rather than of its basest evil, we must learn to grow together in new ways that can bring to all the recognition and peace we deserve and need.
* See “A Declaration of Collective Atonement on the Part of Jews of Conscience” at The Shalom Center.
See Mathew Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
Banner Image: “Not In Our Name”: Led by Jewish groups, hundreds of Jews and allies came together at the California State Capital to call on legislators to support an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and to stop the US funding of genocide. Photo by Peg Hunter on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree that it is time to “grow together in new ways” so that “all can recognize and find the peace that all deserve and need?” How do we get there from here?
Recommended Reading
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox. He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.
