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The God who beckons
Recent discoveries in science have given us a new picture of the divine creator
Aug. 28, 2009
(Photos by NASA)
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PDF versionKatie was a second-grader in one of our schools. One Friday at art class as the teacher roamed the aisles checking progress, she stopped at Katie’s desk and asked, “Well, Katie, what are you drawing?”
“I am drawing a picture of God,” Katie said proudly.
“Katie,” the teacher answered, “you can’t draw a picture of God. Nobody knows what God looks like.”
Katie said, “They will when I’m finished.”
We are all invited now to draw a new picture of God.
Picasso said: “God is just another artist. He made a giraffe, an elephant and a cat. He has no style. He just keeps trying new things.” And Simone Weil wrote, “It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures.”
What happens when classical spirituality meets modern science? Which of them is “right”? Are the two reconcilable? Or are they doomed to be eternal opposites?
There was a time when asking a question about the purpose of life was simpler than it is now because the answer never changed. Whatever existed and happened, we knew, was the eternal will and calculated design of the God who had made things. Our one purpose in life was to keep a set of basically intractable but ultimately fundamental rules until we had managed to negotiate this world well enough to escape it to a better one.
The process was clear. The rules were unequivocal. Life was a game played to achieve spiritual perfection, despite the fact that we came to realize as life went on that perfection essentially and continually eluded us. Worse, “God’s will for us” was never totally apparent but we knew that it had something to do with ferreting out and being faithful to an eternal plan fully known only by God but incumbent upon us.
We learned that God had a particular function or role for each of us: male and female, clergy and lay, slave and free, ruler and ruled. In that schema the purpose of life was certain, however obscure the project itself. It was, in other words, a game of cosmic dice. Some people won; some people didn’t. And God was in charge of it all.
Until Charles came along.
The unfolding of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and the launch, ironically, of the priest Georges Lemaître’s big bang theory -- you can imagine how popular that made him in the church -- changed everything. Evolution and the big bang theory may have clarified the questions of science about the origin and end of life but they continue to this day to unsettle what until now had become relatively standard, unarguable theological conclusions concerning the ways of God with the world.
Two issues in particular challenge the commonplaces of religion and spiritual identity.
The first concerns the traditional definition of creation. Instead of the until now uncontested notion that every creature on earth is the unique and purposeful creation of God, it has begun to dawn, in the light of Darwin’s theory of evolution, that life may well be simply an accident of organic chemistry.
After billions of years, of multiple mistakes, a cycle of chemical configurations and a series of hit-and-miss successes, life as we know it, science tells us, simply emerged. With no sense of uniqueness, no evidence of completeness, and no supernatural intervention.
As a result, life, some argue, is a self-generating fortuity, spawned by nothing, for the sake of nothing, with nowhere to go.
With an explanation like that, the whole notion of life’s meaningfulness simply evaporates into the bizarrely unique chemistry that sustains it.
Thrown into orbit by a primordial blast -- who knows why -- billions of years ago, we are trapped here simply waiting for the fire in the blast to die out and the ice that follows it all to go to dust.
A subtler God
End of story, some say. In this model God is passé; life is purposeless. But is the tale of evolution necessarily all that bleak, all that spiritually arid, all that purposeless?
The answer, I think, does not lie in damning, rejecting or quibbling with the data of science. The answer depends on humanity’s rethinking its definition of God. It depends on our ability to imagine a greater sense of self. It depends on our understanding of the ecology of life. It depends on what the metaphor of evolution itself might have to say about both the nature of God and our own possible place in an evolving universe.
Of all the statements Einstein ever made, beyond relativity, beyond the bend in space and time, it is what he said about God that may, in the end, be seen as his most profound insight of them all.
“God,” said Einstein, “is subtle but not malicious.”
Bubble Nebula NGC 7635Well, perhaps ... but such subtlety and goodwill were hardly visible to the human eye, hardly arguable to those who were suffering the evil they were told was meant simply to test their fidelity or to try their character.
Such subtlety, in fact, is barely sustainable without the eye of blind faith in the light of the injustices and struggles of the real world around us.
For centuries, for instance, the struggle to define the origin of evil and the nature of God has plagued the religious community, has challenged spirituality to the limits. Few questions have done more than this one to strain the fabric of churches or the bonds between thinkers and believers, between philosophers and theologians.
In our time, with the addition of the relatively newfound scientific problem of the nature of creation itself, the very existence of religion could well seem to be in danger and a sense of spiritual purpose a thing of the past.
If life, as science says, is self-creating, what can possibly be the cosmic or overarching purpose of life? What, in fact, can be the purpose of God?
It all depends, of course, on who we say God is. A wag said: First God created humans; then humans created God. And we did. To the point that nothing we know about science now equates with what we have told ourselves about God.
As a result, science confronts the definition of God as we have framed it in the past but, in the process, ironically gives us the opportunity now to see the multiple dimensions of God that we missed.
And this great crossover point, this new Galileo moment in history, gives us a sense of purpose in life that is beyond the sanctification of the self. Indeed, this is the moment after which everything religion has said about the nature of God must somehow shift.
The God of creation, the religious world determined, was all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present and all-holy. The problem lay in the fact that a God of these proportions failed, it seemed, to exercise such power when it came to the creation this very God had created.
This God did not save the world from evil, did not exercise blatant power in behalf of the good, did not save the righteous from the unrighteous, did not act in behalf of the oppressed. This was a God whose merit theology, whose rule-driven scorekeeping, trumped care, compassion and love.
The faithful, we were taught, got the God they earned, or, conversely, lost the God they didn’t, if they were unable to figure out what that God really wanted in every situation and how to pass every spiritual double-bind test.
Instead, they could, at best, only hope for eternal life and everlasting peace somewhere else. This life was out of their hands. This world was a mysterious jumble of good and evil meant to tempt and try them. This was not a subtle God; this was a God whose “will” too often looked more like malice than it did like mercy. The ways of this God with creation were straightforward and manifest. The creator God was patriarch, lawgiver and avenging judge.
Not only was this God not a “subtle” God but how could we say with certainty that this God was not a malevolent one, except that our hearts tell us that God, to be God, must be more than that.
As a consequence of theology like that, we enthroned maleness. We exalted a “rationality” that was far too often deeply irrational. We created the distant and unemotional God of the Greek philosophers who affects our life at every stage and every moment since. This creator God exercised power over everything, we said. But then we got confused trying to explain that God’s failure to use that power in order to save us from what endangers us.
We talked about “free will” but got tangled up again in the implications of what it means to be the weanlings of an all-knowing God. If God really knew everything before it happened, how could we possibly have free will?
We chafed under the burden of the “perfectionism” that the will of an all-perfect God must, of necessity, require of us, but of which, it was clear, we were patently incapable. The inferences of this kind of God for our own well-being were heavy indeed.
But then came Darwin and evolution and an entirely new way of seeing both creation and the world. In this world, every act of creation is not the unique act of an eternal God.
Instead, the God of creation becomes the God of ongoing creation, of life intent on its own development, and of life involved in contributing to its own emerging form.
Polar-Ring Galaxy NGC 4650AFrom this perspective, creation, life itself, is a work in process. It grows from one stage to another. It is immersed in both possibility and mistakes. It is a creature of imagination on the way to the unimaginable. The God of grand but hidden designs becomes the God of evolution, of the working out of creation as we go. Suddenly free will, the choices we make as we labor at the project of life, becomes important. Decision-making becomes universally significant, and selection of our actions determines the shape of an ongoing evolving world.
The humble God
A self-creating universe becomes co-creator with the humble God who shares power and waits for the best from us and provides for what we need to make it happen. We become participants in the process of life and the development of the world that is not so much planned as it is enabled. As nature grows, experiments, unfolds, selects and adapts, so then must we. Growth, not perfection, becomes the purpose of life. Ongoing creation, not predestined fate, becomes the purpose of life.
The very process of human growth, not human puppetry in the hands of a disinterested and demanding God, becomes the purpose of life. And God becomes the God of a universe on its way to growing into glory, of becoming one with its creator. Life ceases to be a program of expectations tied up in a black box, the purpose of which is to tease us into unlocking and unraveling the mystery of our lives before it gets to be too late to achieve it.
In an evolving world, then, God becomes “becoming.” God is the one who stands by as we grow from one self to another, from one level of insight to another, from one age and awareness to another. God, we come to understand, is not the God of fixed determinations now. The past is no longer a template of forever. God becomes instead the God of the future. God, we come to see in the model that is evolutionary, is promise and possibility and forever emerging life.
The spiritual implications of a creation that goes on creating are major.
We are meant to create with the creator. We are here to discover the rest of ourselves in an equally evolving cosmos. We are not about perfection. We are about always selecting the better, about entering into the transformation of the world as it experiments with life, chooses for life, sees mistakes not as failure but as one more learning on the ladder of spiritual success.
In this world, the God of evolution becomes God the mother as well as God the father. God the mother understands pain. She bears us and then lets us grow from error to solution, from failure to success. She loves us for trying. She not only sets the standard, she helps us over the bar.
She is the rest of the image of the biblical God that Abrahamic religions have largely ignored to the peril of true spiritual development but that the spirit knows and seeks forever. She, the biblical God, “Cries out as a woman in labor” (Isaiah 42:14). She is the one whom the psalmist sees as “a nursing woman” (Psalm 131: 1-2), who in Hosea (11:3-4) is a cuddling mother who takes Israel in her arms, and who, in Proverbs as wisdom, “is there with God in the beginning” (8:22-31).
In a world in evolution is there purpose in the universe? The answer must certainly be: Never more so than now. Evolution is, in fact, a great spiritual teacher. We learn from the fossils of the ages that development is most often a slow and uncertain process, a precarious and breakneck experience that demands both time and trust in the future that is God, and in the God of the future. Evolution teaches us that movement from one stage of life to another is often both cumbersome and painful but that the pain is prelude to a better self.
We learn that failure is a necessary part of life, not its misdoing. It is simply a holy invitation to become more than we are at present. Time is grace and trying is virtue. Struggle is a sign of new life, not a condemnation of this one.
Evolution shows us that the God of becoming is a beckoning God who goes before us to invite us on, to sustain us on the way, rather than a judging God who measures us by a past we did not shape.
Now human beings can begin to revel in what is meant by growing to full stature as a responsible and participative spiritual adult whose work on the planet really, really matters. Life, suddenly, is more a blessing both to the universe and to the self than it is simply a test of a person’s moral limits. To be alive, to be a person in the process of becoming, it becomes clear, is a blessing, not a bane. We are, alone and together, significant actors in the nature of life and the strengthening of the fibers of humankind.
Evolution gives us a God big enough to believe in.
Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister is a best-selling author and international lecturer on topics of justice, peace, human rights, women’s issues, and contemporary spirituality in the church and in society.
From the article... "Two
From the article...
"Two issues in particular challenge the commonplaces of religion and spiritual identity.
The first concerns the traditional definition of creation. Instead of the until now uncontested notion that every creature on earth is the unique and purposeful creation of God, it has begun to dawn, in the light of Darwin’s theory of evolution, that life may well be simply an accident of organic chemistry."
...I couldn't find the second issue...could someone help me?
I understood the two issues
I understood the two issues were 1) creation and 2) evolution...??
Rachel, You certainly didn't
Rachel,
You certainly didn't come to understand that from the article, because it's not there. Neither is poor feeble Desert Chuck's explanation. The correct explanation of course is that the 2nd issue is NOT identified in Sr Joan's essay, a fact which would have doomed her to a grade of "F" anywhere except here at NCR.
But that mistake is small potatoes compared to Sr. Joan's rambling attempt to define this God before evolution(which she fails to define) and that God after Chuck Darwin's infamous theory(and remember, that's ALL it is). Here's a representative sample of her erroneous prose from the article, there are many more...
"But then came Darwin and evolution and an entirely new way of seeing both creation and the world. In this world, every act of creation is not the unique act of an eternal God.
Instead, the God of creation becomes the God of ongoing creation, of life intent on its own development, and of life involved in contributing to its own emerging form."
...God doesn't become anything. God is changeless. Sr Joan would be well advised to spend more time praying and less time spreading her heresy, after all there's plenty of heretics here at NCR. In fact, here from the 16th century is a prayer for Sr. Joan, the prayer of St Teresa of Avila...
Let nothing disturb you.
Let nothing frighten you.
All things are changing.
God alone is changeless.
Patience attains the good.
He who has God lacks nothing.
God alone fills all our needs.
My dearest JDS, Indeed I am
My dearest JDS,
Indeed I am poor, and even feeble, and also Chuck, and in this desert, but in this not mistaken.
The Reverend Sister Joan Chittister, brilliant and well respected author of countless treatises of Roman Catholic Spirituality (I in particular treasure her brochure upon celebrating the Holy Rosary, as well on aging, being as I am poor and feeble, but also the Tent of Abraham, etc.) here displays the most graceful subtlety of her art, one which approaches the ineffable Mr. Joyce, by clearly exposing the point one as you mention: Creation, and not so clearly delineating point two. I regret you expected to find as obviously written her POINT TWO, but she is far too subtle and graceful a writer to insult our intelligence in this way. Rather must we engage with the text, and unearth the second point.
The second point being precisely as I so awkwardly and clumsily tried to represent, obviously to little avail, regretfully thanks to my severely limited literary incapability. Perhaps you might tolerate here a second attempt, should it manage to pass the watchful eye of the NCR censors.
Point one is her discussion of creation.
Point two is her unfolding of the mystery of co-creation.
God as creative teacher calls for students who listen.
Today in Benedictine houses worldwide we begin once more the reading of the Rule For Monks written by our Holy Father Saint Benedict fifteen hundred years ago. The first words of that holy rule are: "Ausculta, fili (Listen, my child)" to these precepts . . .
God calls us to listen, and hearing, to engage in creation.
Saint Maximilian Kolbe once said between his newspaper offices in Nagasaki and his martyrdom in Auschwitz that Hate can never endure as hate is not creative. Hate does not create. Only Love, transcendent love, which is God.
God is Love.
God is the teacher of love. We are students called to listen.
A teacher without listening students is like the sound of one hand clapping, the tree which falls in the woods with no one around making not a sound as no one listens.
I believe but cannot explain with sufficient clarity that Sister Chittister in her second point of co-creation calls us to listen ("Ausculta") and to create with God a transcendent Love real and palpable in this present day, place and society.
Like establishing compassionate, universal and accessible health care, in particular for our elderly and our poor. Saint James wrote that religion pure and simple is to care for the widow and orphan in their distress.
To do so is to Love, is to co-create.
To refuse to hear the cry of the poor is to refuse to hear the cry of God, the cry of love, the cry to create with God who is love a world of justice and of peace, our eschatalogical end.
To refuse to hear is to refuse to believe, is to refuse to practice our Faith, is to refuse to see Sister Joan's second point.
Come. Co-create.
Love thy enemy.
Do good to those who harm you.
Do for others what you want them to do for you.
Give your shirt as well as your coat.
Read Dorothy Day.
Read Sister Joan Chittister OSB.
Listen.
and Love.
I remain calling you in this long and lonesome desert, your poorest and most feeble little brother,
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
Yes, give YOUR shirt and YOUR
Yes, give YOUR shirt and YOUR coat, but don't steal those of another.
Dear Chuck, We Catholics have
Dear Chuck, We Catholics have always reserved the title Reverend when writing or addressing our Catholic Priests-not Catholic nuns! Perhaps you do not agree with what we Catholics do?
Yes, God alone is changeless;
Yes, God alone is changeless; rather it is our perception of God that changes.
I think when the author
I think when the author writes "the God of creation becomes the God of ongoing creation" she means it is our understanding of "the God of creation" that is changing.
But I do have to think that God is capable of change. If not then what is the purpose of prayer? Why do we have a NEW testament? How, in Numbers 14, was Moses able to talk God out of destroying those vexing Israelites?
Hopefully we are capable of change as well.
JDS God is changeless, but
JDS God is changeless, but our understanding is not. Science is most definitely uncovering a process which points to a God which is not up there somewhere keeping score, but intrinsically involved in all creation at all levels guiding it, but not coercing it, to greater levels of complexity and beauty. In this process creation sometimes writes with crooked lines but the over all evolution can be seen to move forward.
The first is Creationism The
The first is Creationism
The second is co-creation
Have you been creating today, JDS?
If not then please get out there now and
Love thy enemy
and so create our new co-creation of Love All Transcendent, which is God
The evolution of symbiosis is
The evolution of symbiosis is nature’s pattern and God’s plan. In every least fiber and fabric of life, sustainability is a process and product of symbiosis. Evidence of science reveals the patterns of evolved symbiosis, and the life and teaching of Jesus Christ reveals the imperative of divine Eucharist, the mandate of love, of personal self-giving in interests of common and sustainable wellbeing.
The intensions of biochemistry and the intentions of consciousness operate by a grammar of common singular purpose, of discerning symbiotic potentials and bringing them to life. The constant and purposeful uplift of universal wellbeing sustains individual and communal personality. Hyped fixation in self-obsession and the exploitation of other get in the way of wellbeing and uplift.
Institutions that hype corporate obsession to exploit (consumerism, “market” economics) betray nature’s necessity and divinity’s mandate. Authentic “market economy” is first and foremost aware that symbiotic life, as represented in the largesse of ecologic nature, is the condition and universal basis for all wellbeing and sustainability. Corporate colonial exploitation persists in the imperial mind/ culture of church and state and threatens the extinction of humankind and life as we know it.
If religion and faith, economics, would be truly authentic, they will seek to illuminate the Divine Plan and Natural Pattern of symbiosis, which are at the same time the teaching of Jesus Christ and nature’s unconditional mandate. The Call of universal conscience is for universal symbiotic awareness and the preservation of symbiotic purposes. Vatican II has put the Roman Catholic Church on a course that breaks free from past obsession in imperial Roman culture and the dead end of corporate colonial exploitation that still enables global ecological waste.
http://www.secondenlightenment.org/The%20Quantum%20Electric%20Universe.pdf
http://www.secondenlightenment.org/In%20Plain%20English,%20Symbiosis%20a...
Perhaps the alienation of
Perhaps the alienation of materiality from spirituality, and spirituality from materiality.?
In the light of evolutionary consciousness, energy is matter, matter is energy. Cultured religious consciousness has furthered hatred against material nature, thinking it to be evil and the frustration of spirituality. Experience and modern science expose the lie of religious animus against materiality and the justification of the human whim to exploit devil nature. It is twisted spirituality that is evil, not materiality, not secularity.
Belief in evil spirits and good spirits inhabiting nature is old as reflective consciousness. Aristotle and Christian Scholasticism after him, distinguish to this day matter (physica) and spirit (metaphysica, “form”). Cultured monastic asceticism still promotes the infliction of punishment on the body in order to control the passions of sinful matter/ body. Right thinking recognizes that it isn’t nature that is evil, sinful, but the cultured abuses of human judgment on nature and others in possessive/ obsessive pursuits.
The religious animus against nature underlies cultured male arrogance, dominion and exploitation of women. In whatever matter, when males exclude women from privileges they arrogate to themselves they act sacrilegiously against purposes of order in natural sacrament. Male-cultured exclusionism is self-inflicted excommunication from the functional harmony of religious/ civil relationships. The harmony of communication, consciousness and conscience is frustrated when males deny female consciousness and rights of female persons.
It is common wisdom that the one who defines the vocabulary controls the conversation. And so it has been in religious culture; males define and control the theological/ social vocabulary. Theological dogma dominates in imperial, patriarchal society. Today, the old, imperial rationality, patriarchy, is on the run, as are dominion theology and the denial of women’s civil rights.
In religious consciousness the divine purposes of communal harmony coincide with natural symbiosis and Christian Humanism; differences will always be, but they can serve to enlarge consciousness and find peaceful resolution. The cultural exclusion of women from the godly work of communal harmony is a violation of natural order and the frustration of symbiosis and Christian justification—what the work of priesthood is about. Institutional denial of woman-priesthood breaches communal trust and frustrates the communal working of grace.
A deep-rooted shift of social consciousness is needed and is happening. The old anathemas and excommunications of imperial issue are exposed for their invalidity, and the rocky ground of exclusionary religion is yielding to informed understandings of essential/ universal continuity in the order of Cosmic Sacrament—what the work of evolution is about.
“SACRAMENT, as Self-Reflective Ecology”
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977793206
“How Words Undo Us”
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977005273
“Mutuality, Complementarity, Subsidiarity”
http://www.secondenlightenment.org/Mutuality,%20Complementarity,%20Subsi...
“THE ECONOMY & Nature’s Intrinsic Order”
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977260353
Isaac Ben Luria a 16 century
Isaac Ben Luria a 16 century Jewish mystic said something like : ..."The stars in the heavens are the shattered face of God."
Maybe the beckoning God of the cosmos reflects back to us the "terrible beauty" of our own brokeness."
Perhaps when we look up on a dark night someday we will see the inner spark of God's Life glowing in us all and intuitively know we are being invited to strengthen the fiber of our own humanity and heal what is shatterred in our lives and in our world.
From “First Metagenesis”, pp
From “First Metagenesis”, pp 45,46, http://www.evolution101.org/PRINTBK4a.pdf
“All life resonates to the magnetic beat of Deep Earth's heavy metal harmony. The ancient molecule cytochrome-c gives clues into life's deep past. It is the anchor structure of all plant and animal DNA.
“The "heme" molecule is the core structure of cytochrome-c, and the "iron atom" is at the core of the heme molecule. From the deep "ash" of the ardent Earth-core arise the "Dark Night Angels", the phoenix DNA. DNA is a consciousness-building, forge-cast crystalline substance of diamond-durability that has been proven in storm-and-fire crucibles and hard-rock trials. All Earth-life resonates to the harmonic wave-fields of stolid DNA, which is miserly in the genetic breaches it allows. Earth-life's algorithms sequence on the logic of magnetic iron.
“Personal consciousness is Earth-voice talking, revealing, reassuring and resurrecting the heart-kept wisdom of the psyche in fleshed-out symmetries that are alert to deal in time with future opportunities. Network life is the natural force/ field (inherency/ coherency) wherein Earth-soul works out her algorithms.
“The "perfection of Nature" in its final outcome is not some before-the-fact anticipation by a "divine mind" located outside of and apart from Creation-in-Process. Nature-in-process doesn't just reflect "divinity-in-process", but is the exemplification of divinity-in-process, for Nature's transformational processing is not "moonshine", rather, it is "sunshine", that is, it is purposeful in doing what is manifested in its light. Because of Nature's "openness" to process, that is, its responsiveness to here-and-now contingencies, the notion of an ultimate "state of perfection" (absolutism) is a fiction of the human imagination, a lunacy.
“The politicizing of government and religion on the "static" figment of "divine right" is a deadly politics of moonshine, also a lunacy! Global violence testifies to the fact. Instituted absolutism is iron-minded violence that prosecutes its wars on the commercial logic of dominion over Nature. Its consciousness is hardwired against openness. Nature's mechanisms for "self-perfecting" (responding to contingencies) are without hang-ups; those that work in the established patterns of redundancy are cherished and retained, and those that do not work disappear into the crucible-mix.
“Two transformational mechanisms essential in transmitting and securing the hard-won successes of life are the self-replicating procedures of cell-division (asexuality) and cell-to-cell interpenetration (sexuality). Accomplished in both reproductive devices is the mixing of substances (transubstantiation: across substance). The specifically established redundancies of differentiated life do not prevent transubstantiation across the barriers of species, but, by symbioses life easily crosses "word" barriers and effects miraculous mixings of soul/ substance. In golden fluency, Nature's good-word prose blends number-consciousness in her transformational alchemy.
"Metagenesis" is a biological term for the reproduction of life which is by way of the "alternation of generations"; it identifies Nature's use of the alternate strategies of asexual and sexual reproduction by the same organism which produces both the eggs and spores (the female and male gametes), which when joined produce the embryonic organism (seeds). Wheat-corn grain exemplifies: the "germ" (embryo) of the corn-grass seed is of self-fertilized egg-origin, while the "seed endosperm" (embryo food) is of extra-embryonic egg origin. Thus, Eucharistic Bread, made from the endosperm-flour of the grass-seed, is food of wholly female providence, free of outside "male" contribution—a "virgin birth". Earth-life transubstantiation is accomplished by the grace potentials of virgin grain only. God-life, God-birth, is grain grace. Virgin grain is "The Bread of Life"—Eucharist substantiating Divine Presence; virgin grain is "The Oil of Life"— the fervor of intention kindled in every heart. In female grace alone, all life is thermodynamically divinized.
“Word is made flesh by virgin grace; virgin grace embodies the Divine Word, the Way, the Truth, and the Light. Not Jerusalem. Not Mecca. Not Rome. The "religious center" that matters to every heart is "everywhere and nowhere", is that portion of the universe distributively centered in the subject-consciousness of personal soul. Do we not, in faith, self-recognize cosmic woman's soul-energy, universally distributed—God's Divine Love inspiriting the whole of Creation?
“It is a singular truth that all life depends totally for soul/ substance edification on the grace-messaging of female providence. The consciousness of life's priesthood is woman's mind; males need to desist from alienating themselves from her sustaining insights. Woman must be intolerant of a male-objectified "priesthood" that is self-excommunicated from her sustaining authenticity. The culture of male-only priesthood is misbegotten. Witness the signs of the times!
“Humankind is a people promised in Second Coming". Second Coming is a discovery of conscient continuity abiding in divine newness—the promise of personal divinity/ creativity revealing infinity in the finite time-continuum. The Second Coming promise identifies the self of the subjective/ objective continuum characterizing by and characterized in the conscient soul/ body. Each birth is a resurrected Christ-Coming, a "Call"; "answer" witnesses divinity in purposeful living.
See:
See: http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977810487
Spoken like a Christian
Spoken like a Christian humanist, which is very good. But not a scientist. We need more trained scientists "doing" (as the common parlance has it) theology. I can write essays like this in my sleep because I've been reading them since I was a kid. Sorry, but it's not nearly as well informed as it could be. Why nothing about the religious implications of The Singularity or Transhumanism? If you don't know what I'm talking about it is past time to learn.
Sorry Mark Andrews, but not
Sorry Mark Andrews, but not only do I not know (or care) what you're talking about, but you don't know what you're talking about. As the bestseller said, "All I Really Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten", ie. God created all things.
I do wish that Sister Joan would have defined exactly what she meant by the term "evolution" in her article, because it means much different things to different people in different contexts.
Mr. Andrews, you might be
Mr. Andrews, you might be able to write these essays in your sleep, but I cannot. For me, this is the beginning of a conversation that I am very thirsty for. If you are the scientist that can inform us, please join our conversation. Otherwise, you are no help to us.
Are you a humanist or a
Are you a humanist or a scientist? Not providing a brief explanation of The Singularity of Transhumanism while obviously stating its importance, seems to smack of unhumane, non scientific egotism.
Patience, Mark. Each is in
Patience, Mark. Each is in her or his own stage in the journey. It may or may not be toward Kurzweil's Singularity; I rather hope something else is in store.
“Singularity” is the
“Singularity” is the energetic substance of all existence; its two modes of originality are precursors to sexuality, electromagnetism and self-reflective consciousness. At the axes of swirling galaxies are small numbers of orbiting heavy metal suns whose gravity sucks everything in proximity into its hopper (event horizon) and grinds everything into the “flour of singularity,” what is the first and original stuff of Eucharist
From my personal interest in and reading about cosmic science (I make no claim to scientific professionalism — I’m just an interested observer) I understand there are two kinds of cosmic singularity; the super-concentrated density that seeded the big bang and the ultra-high frequency wave bands (electromagnetism) that are the axle channeling energy (gamma rays, x-rays, etc) from the galaxies into the cosmos. This latter singularity is called “naked singularity” because it is invisible in the same way that “dark matter”, the great bulk of substance in the universe, is invisible.
The early Eastern Christian theologian, St John of Damascus, defined God as “a sea of infinite substance.” Creation’s life potential arises from the joining of the two modes of singularity, which are precursors to atomic nuclei/ electrons, to femininity/ masculinity, and to the ovum and the sperm. The “sea of infinite substance” (invisible singularity) is the amniotic matrix containing potentials of life’s diversification, its function and endurance. The seeding of the amniotic matrix (invisible positive potential), by the gravity potential of negative energy (the big bang point-density), initiates the pregnant evolution of the cosmos and life processing up to the present time and on into the unknowable future.
Recently (August 2009) a television program on IPTV (Monster of the Milky Way) was aired; it was about black holes, the grinding mills at the center of galaxies. The untold numbers of cosmic galaxies are giant pinwheels. From their centripetal centers (black holes) to their centrifugal peripheries they are held together by the balancing of electrical forces which also give the galaxies their great potentials for diversification and ultimately the creation and sustainability of life.
Dear Sister Joan, Thank you
Dear Sister Joan,
Thank you for this wonderful writing and it is so timely. Simply put, God wants us to learn about these various evolutionary stages in man's development, but also the Earth's development as we are led to know about these stages. Images from space attest to an expanding universe. As we look into these various stages of evolution we are learning about God's Creation, which is learning about the Creator of all life and the processes in life that keep it in motion.
I'll be working shortly on a piece of music on the Carboniferous Period which occurred from about 354 to 290 million years ago during the late Paleozoic Era. The music will accompany a book on Evolution and Molecular Evolution. From this era are left our current coal deposits in Northern Europe and Asia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, which were the remains of trees and other plant life that existed then. Trees in that period had more bark than wood and they were huge. It is from that bark and millions of years in the making of it to coal deposits. Just the right ingredients, the right amount of time and chemical and biological processes it took to create an energy source. I think God knew we would need energy to sustain us. This proves, at least for me, God thought of our every need before we knew we needed it. God also knew we would one day know of cleaner ways to obtain energy for our needs. God did not make an infinite supply of coal, and so we must develop other ways to create/generate energy, and we must use our God-given evolving creativity to do that. Everything is here for us to sustain life here. With our free will, we can sustain it, improve it, or not. Aren't we becoming more like God, being one in relationship with God, as co-creators, when we foresee the needs of our fellow man, and by our free will see to it that those needs are met?
God continues to create the universe. I think you said it best here: "God becomes instead the God of the future. God, we come to see in the model that is evolutionary, is promise and possibility and forever emerging life."
I wonder though, if the carbon that was left from that Carboniferous Period so many millions of years ago might also be used for other purposes other than just energy? If we deplete it, we'll never know the other uses that God might have intended for their use for our good. Our understanding and needs are also evolving.
You remind me of the
You remind me of the wandering rocks episode from Mr. James Joyce's Ulysses, in which the kindly Jesuit former rector contemplates how very clever and thoughtful and loving it was for God to leave peat in bogs for us to cut and burn for our warmth.
How very anthro-centric of us!
What exactly do you mean by
What exactly do you mean by your comment Frere charles? Is there something wrong about believing that God provides for our every need? I am not sure what you are saying to me? I am what? You are defining me as what? anthro-centric? What is anthro-centric?
If you have something to say that is meaningful, please say it.
Butterfly writes "God
Butterfly writes "God provides for our every need."
It's the Republicans in the US Senate (and their bishop puppets) that block and filibuster our universal and accessible health care such as that enjoyed in civilized nations of this earth which do not use our wellness needs as a vampyric means for raising Wall Street profits.
I was simply sharing a refreshingly delightful passage from my favorite (in fact my ONLY) novel. Please read that central Episode sometime when you can (I believe it is Episode Nine, commonly but mistakenly called Wandering Rocks).
You might find that passage interesting to think about. I apologize for offending, however unintentionally. Your words simply rang a distant bell, and I must remember to write logically, not associatively, and never anthropocentrically (kindly forgive as well the lost syllable).
Thanks Frere Charles. It was
Thanks Frere Charles. It was not immediately clear to me what you had meant and I wanted to be sure. I will definitely have to read that. I'm glad that what I said "rang a distant bell" to a story that is a classic and that is your favorite.
Pardon me, Butterfly, but the
Pardon me, Butterfly, but the novel in question is James Joyce's Ulysses. Somehow in my feebleness I forgot to mention the title.
Thank you so much for your generosity of spirit here and always.
Dear Charlie, Are you from
Dear Charlie, Are you from Brooklyn, New York???
It is also the Democrats (and
It is also the Democrats (and their puppets the LCWR and NCR) that block true health care reform by the refusal to leave abortion totally out of the equation. They deny it is in there, but then why block every effort to specifically block it? Factcheck.org, a non partisan group that checks teh veracity of political speeches and programs, states that from all of their research from the wording of the bills themselves to the policies of those who would implement them and their speeches,etc, that abortion will likely be part of the "government option" and likely imposed on some private programs. If this has nothing to do with abortion, then why don't they simply add a line that says abortion can never be funded. Catholics will be happy, bishops can support some of the measures, and we can move forward--at least until PP, Emily's list and CTA won't support a plan that does not pay for abortion.
Thank you Sr. Joan for
Thank you Sr. Joan for starting down a path that goes beyond pietistic formalism. This is a breath of fresh air! Just two thoughts, the first is from Thomas Merton: "I'm not certain of what I believe, but I am trying to find God. The fact that I am not certain isn't important, but I believe that the fact that I am trying to find God, is." The second is from Karen Armstrong's book A HISTORY OF GOD where she basically states that all we can do is trace the history of the human perceptions of God. I especially appreciate the insight that she shares that as soon as we begin to talk about God, we should acknowledge that we don't know what we are talking about!
Kudos to you, Sr. Joan, for perhaps setting a spark!
I like this article. That
I like this article. That you don't know or tell every bit of science in this post does not make it less but more. The idea is clearly portrayed that our free will is able to be used in co-creation with God as a much more purposeful reason for being than perfectionism. It makes life worth living. To know that the money we use for war could instead be used to come up with cures for disease is co-healing with God is important. We are not creatures put here to try for perfection within our caste but to follow the way of Jesus - putting our efforts into healing, loving, sharing and enjoying life even when it causes us pain and suffering. At least pain and suffering aren't being used for the ridiculous notion that they are for our good but instead that we can USE THEM for THE GOOD of all to try to stop the same for others. This has been how I've seen God to be as it made no sense to me that he just lets all the evil happen - he's been waiting for us to help him stop it. Will we rise to the occasion? Probably but with fits and starts just as you describe evolution. After all, we no longer think it's okay for husbands to beat their wives so a little less violence is now here. We just have to keep working at it. I really enjoyed this article.
I like your essay Joan. Neil
I like your essay Joan.
Neil Chapman
Sister Joan, I anticipate
Sister Joan,
I anticipate each of your writings with joy in my heart and mind. With each writing both seem to grow. With todays' contemplative writing, I feel even more awed by this envisioning of God.
I am a woman, well educated and a nurse. Actually a nurse manager or administrator and what comes to me is: God does not appear to be a micro-manager. God is and ever shall be. The presence of God elicits that we believe and praise Gods creation. However how we carry out Gods commandments are the free will choice that we make with every waking breath. Do we waste time and energy arguing the details or are their many paths to carry out this will.
As a manager I keep thinking of one of the newer "managment philosophies" to attain "quality- goals"; one concept is that of the big ball / little ball therory. The premise is that every goal has the "big ball" and many little balls of subsequent goals that help us attain the "big ball" goal(s). Well, I guess God really is the "gigantic ball" and we have many little balls from which to choose that will carry out his will. But there is no answer of what is right or wrong about the choice; we only have to see the outcome and again choose our subsequent course of action. We do have the answer if we only have the will to read it.
Thank you Sister Joan for handing me a little light to read the answers to my very tiny spheres to question whether I am, in fact living to carry out the will of God.
Edith O'Neil-Page, RN, MSN, AOCNS
Shame on the presumably
Shame on the presumably Catholic teacher who told second-grader Katie that we don't know what God looks like. The Christian answer is that God looks like Jesus Christ. And what does Jesus look like? From the Gospels we know that Jesus looks like the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the abused, the oppressed. He looks like those in prison. He looks both like the man beaten and left for dead by robbers as well as like the Good Samaritan who saved his life.
I am not saying this to quibble. To me, such is the point of Jesus's message and not all of this ponderous speculation about the "grand" cosmic picture, regarding which, in my opinion, Sister Joan goes on way too long.
I think what has blocked the
I think what has blocked the church is the unsubstantiated insistence that codified Scripture is the fulfillment of God's revelation to humankind, and that revelation is unfortunately frozen in time. I know that not to be true, for I know God is continually revealing God's very essence to us, each and every day through time. I sense within that I am most alive when I am being creative, and enjoying it...be it playing music, writing, building, or praying. Do we not at such times reach within to that which is divine? Also, if it is true that time is elastic, could it be that God stretches and turns time, so that it is akin to deChardin's helix. Time is our beginning and our ending, and both end-points are in God. The journey each of us takes is not so very far that we cannot understand and have compassion for one another. We recognize ourselves in the eyes and faces of others.
Thanks Sister. I've been
Thanks Sister. I've been studying Father Thomas Dubay's series on EWTN: "The Church-God's Plan". Father Thomas Dubay describes eloquently the Big Bang and the Anthropic principle, the specialness of the earth as a placed designed for man and woman specifically by God. In his lectures, Fr. Dubay eloquently makes the point that scientists and theologians are in agreement upon one dimension of their methods: BEAUTY. A scientist describes as "beautiful" a theory or an experiment to support or negate a theory as "beautiful" when the design of the experiment is so elegant and simple and straightforward that it leaves no question unanswered. Fr. Dubay explores beauty as evidence of truth in his book: "The Evidential Power of Beauty".
I was educated and trained in Graduate School not far from Erie, PA in laboratories working along side many evolutionary biologists. My principal advisor in graduate school was deeply religious and we, his students, questioned him about his belief in evolution and his belief in God. His answer? Evolution is proof of God, evolution is merely a technique that God uses, evolution is the palate that God mixes his colors upon before applying to the canvas.....no matter what question in the laboratory we were trying to answer, there was always one guarantee: Scientists, in their methodology, in answering one question, always raise or uncover more questions ( in religion or theology we call the things we cannot answer, "mysteries". Any honest scientist will admit that many things mystify them and they confront mystery constantly.
I notice that my comments
I notice that my comments were censored...
Well done Joan, great to see
Well done Joan, great to see all these moments of historical insights being annunciated logically for all of us average persons who don't delve too much into such historical developmnents in our universal story. The phrase we are cocreators with God now has more meaning today as we continue to discover ways and means to preserve energy for and in our world today and the future. God's creative power alive and well amongst us as evolution continues to unfold before our eyes, may e have the vision to see the newness birthing.
Sr. Joan, I have been waiting
Sr. Joan,
I have been waiting for a column on your take on the Vatican "investigation" Inquisition) into the female religous orders in the US. Did I miss a column or would you have something posted on another website? k.
Absolutely beautifully
Absolutely beautifully created, Sister, both the universe and your piece.
"The answer, I think, does
"The answer, I think, does not lie in damning, rejecting or quibbling with the data of science. The answer depends on humanity’s rethinking its definition of God. It depends on our ability to imagine a greater sense of self. It depends on our understanding of the ecology of life. It depends on what the metaphor of evolution itself might have to say about both the nature of God and our own possible place in an evolving universe."
Profound hypotheses to answer some very profound questions, Sister Joan. Alas, I think these very real questions have been forsaken by all/most organized religions - or at least their infrastructures. Perhaps true religious EVOLUTION for mature people in the future involves moving beyond the PABLUM of the mainline churches' doctrine and CREATION of a true individual and communal relationship with the deity. But who among us is truly brave enough to set out on that vision quest? Many thanx for your continuing "guideposts" along the way.
I'm trying. I invite you to
I'm trying. I invite you to www.evolution101.org
"priest Georges Lemaitre's
"priest Georges Lemaitre's big bang theory -- you can imagine how popular that made him in the church"
the implication being, that he was shunned, hated or silenced for it, right sr joan? perhaps you should try a scoop of history with your pound of snark.
FACTS:
1933 - he proposes his theory to a gathering of scientists in california
1936 - pope pius XI inducted him into the pontifical academy of science. he later became its president.
i doubt think this is what sr joan had in mind. a little research on her part would have prevented her from looking like an historical illiterate.
"God the mother understands pain."
- the implication being, i guess, that God the Son doesn't?
Also, why God is called HE also seems to be misunderstood by her. But perhaps that is caused by her coloring seemingly everything in the terms of gender issues.
I'll ahve to read this again in greater detail later when I have some more time.
I don't understand your your
I don't understand your your little dig at the Church regarding Georges Lemaître. He was quite popular with the hierarchy: elected to the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences, made a monsignor, and even appointed to the commission to study birth control.
Loved the column. Thanks
Loved the column. Thanks for all, Sister Joan.
Yikes. Teilhard, Newton,
Yikes. Teilhard, Newton, Pascal, et al, please intercede for Sr. Joan.
it appears here, my dear
it appears here, my dear Eliza, she intercedes for them
Dear Sr. Joan, Why bring up
Dear Sr. Joan, Why bring up evolution and try to mix the two with CREATIONISM?? GOD IS AND CREATED THE WORLD AND WE HUMANS AND NOTHING LESS!
"God Becoming" fits well with
"God Becoming" fits well with our own human experience of "becoming" both individually and as the People of God. It's an insightful article. Thanks.
“A self-creating universe
“A self-creating universe becomes co-creator with the humble God who shares power and waits for the best from us and provides for what we need to make it happen. We become participants in the process of life and the development of the world that is not so much planned as it is enabled. As nature grows, experiments, unfolds, selects and adapts, so then must we. Growth, not perfection, becomes the purpose of life. Ongoing creation, not predestined fate, becomes the purpose of life.”
We have certainly thrown a monkey-wrench into the works of evolution by destroying a large portion of the available gene pool through manmade mass extinctions and paved-over habitats. I might be looking at this on a too small scale, seeing how big the universe is, but there aren’t very many planets where the “accident of organic chemistry” is capable of creating life.
As theology begins a dialogue
As theology begins a dialogue with science, perhaps faith in God will become more credible and appealing to younger generations who were raised and educated in a world defined by scientific principles. The work of Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, Teilhard de Chardin, and Elizabeth Johnson have already begun this dialogue. Listen to them.
Wonderful, Sr. Joan,
Wonderful, Sr. Joan, absolutely wonderful!
“We are meant to create with the creator” is a fantastic thought! And so is “the God of evolution becomes God the mother”.
I can foresee a time when women take hold of the processes of life and make babies from their own DNA and inject all males in the womb with the gay gene and create a world ruled by maternal love. That’s the kind of “ongoing creation” and “becoming” the beckoning God wants for humanity. This beckoning God wants us to dethrone every vestige of maleness.
Reading what you have written, Sr. Joan, fills me with woman-hope for the future of the world!
"...everything religion has
"...everything religion has said about the nature of God must somehow shift." I am both drawn and repelled by this beautiful essay. Predator-prey relationship is at the heart of the evolutionary process... as well as the endless waste of life at all levels of sentient and organic life. My heart breaks at this manifestation of thermodynamic change. How do we reconcile this with what Jesus said about His father? I struggle deeply here & would appreciate hearing of other's ways of coping with this cognitive dissonance.
Bob Muth
Bob, everything religion has
Bob, everything religion has said about the nature of God must somehow shift, because God is 'unsayable'; God is ineffable. Whatever we say, it always misses the mark. We just do the best we can and keep an open mind. God bless.
This article gives us
This article gives us tremendous hope! Thanks, Joan Chittester!
Joe
Joe Hall/Colkoch1/Anonymous;
Thank you all for your analyses but Sr Joan did not say that our perception or our understanding of God would change. She said and I quote again...
"Instead, the God of creation becomes the God of ongoing creation,". If she had said what you perceived or understood her to say, I would not have commented.
Likewise with her statement that I identified in the very first post...she said there were two issues, identified the first and then neglected to identify the second. Words have meaning for a reason, so that we can communicate ideas. Sr. Joan would flunk out of Junior High English composition!
JDS, I have to admit I've
JDS, I have to admit I've reread this and I'm not sure what the second issue is, as she doesn't actually specifically identify the second. I don't know that she would flunk today's version of a Junior High English class though.
I kind of wondered if this might not have been edited from a longer article.
Colkoch1, I have to admit
Colkoch1,
I have to admit that you are probably correct about Sr Joan NOT flunking out of today's version of Junior High English. Of course I should have said that Sr Joan should have flunked out of any English composition class with this egregious error. The problem is not so much with Sr Joan, but rather with the low standards of English education in this country.
ps. I have never been disappointted whenever I underestimated the editorial staff of this website, so yes, it may indeed have been their fault!
Well, well. The topic of high
Well, well.
The topic of high school freshman theology class today was the 9 attributes of God according to Thomas Aquinas. Although the discussion was not quite as analytical or indepth,these young minds grasped the complexity yet simplicity of dealing with the question of God. I see Sr. Joan's article as a continuation of these discussions into who defines God and how can we be too specific if a paradox exists in each concept as we struggle to define God. And who does have the complete answer? Does anyone or do we each have a
piece of the truth?
Yes, but the big bang theory
Yes, but the big bang theory is dying. Or as Tom Wolfe put it, going down in flames, like Darwinism. It cant explain why the gravitaional constant is what it is. If it were different by one part in 1 trillion, we couldnt be here. Its proponents havent a clue why.
And of course the Darwinists cant explain how DNA came to be. Or Jensen's Swedish chickens. Or how eyes formed.
Of course, if youre like Suskind, Smolin, Hawking, and Eugene Koonin, you will announce that there are an infinite number of universes. Then you can explain anything and everything. Too bad these "scientists" dont have any data from those other universes.
Sr Joan seems to me to have
Sr Joan seems to me to have repeated in her usual stirring way what process philosophers and theologians have been saying for many years now. It is a view that helps many people; and quite a number of respected Catholic philosophers and theologians accept it.
History shows, however, that easy solutions to difficult problems often contain implications that eventually raise more problems than they seem to solve and, more importantly, lose more than they gain. The traditional Catholic doctrine and spirituality of the absolute transcendence of God is, to say the least, downplayed. God tends to become part of our universe; the most important part of course, but still a part. For some, God even seems to become more ‘ecumenical’, sitting more comfortably with the other nature gods.
I continue to find more satisfying the Catholic strength (for some, weakness!) in insisting on the little word 'and': full affirmation of transcendence and full affirmation of immanence. Certainly, as Sr Joan points out, science and evolution don't only create problems, they give us insights that can enrich our vision of both Creator and creature. That is my experience, too, in accepting the orthodox Catholic belief in the transcendent Trinity, in creation and in the incarnation in which the ONE transcendent God is revealed to us and ADORED as Father, indwelling Spirit and incarnate Son. We can hold this firmly not only alongside science and evolution, but also as part of that same world.
To Dear Frere Charles, Thank
To Dear Frere Charles,
Thank you so much for your ending prayer. As last Sunday's lections and, especially, Mark's gospel teach us, "True Religion" is so much more than the clench-hearted diatribe to which you respond. James 1:17 says "Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming from the Father of lights ...", and it is the quality of that liberating Light that is unchanging - not the "laws & statutes" of ideological (un)righteousness. Your prayer is generous-hearted. You show us in your prayer how to honor the commandment of God to love rather than to take the pharisaical route to slander and judge.
Blessings to you. Blessings to Reverend Sister Joan and blessings to those who honor the miracle of God's creation in its beauty and continuing EVOLUTION wherein God's own Self is revealed and worthy of praise.
God's peace to you,
EMcC+
I spend my summers in remote
I spend my summers in remote Alaska with my family. As well as bonding, it is a time of quiet reflection with God. Saint Bernard once remarked that we can learn more from the woods and the brooks than from the books. Nature, like the Church Magesterium, clearly tells us one undeniable truth: males and females have different and complementary roles. God requires both to create a new being. If females try to do the role clearly assinged to the male, they leave unattended the place clearly given to the female and vice versa. Sister Joan frequently puts forth the question: What is the role of women in the Church? Clearly God's answer, spoken to us not just through our Majesterium but also through nature, is that it is an equally important but different and complementary one. I converted from the Episcopal Church to the Catholic Church because of a religious experience that occured after I commented to God that the rules of the Catholic Church were stupid. God responded to my comment by pointing my eyes to a picture of Pope John Paul II and said "He's telling you the truth". Now as a practicing Catholic, I am grateful for the witness of our Church leaders who are persistently scourged and crowned with thorns by Joan Chittister and her friends at National Catholic Reporter. I pray for you all.
Excelent article Sister Joan.
Excelent article Sister Joan. For some of our friends who are searching and have a problem with age-old language about today’s faith I make bold to post here the translation of the introduction of a book review that I wrote last year.
“Agenda Latinoamericana” and “Tiempo Axial” theological book collection have recently brought forth a very timely book published by Abya-Yala in Quito Ecuador. This is the Spanish translation from the German edition of the book by Roger Lenaers S.J., of the original in Flemish, now with the title in Spanish “A Different Christianity is Possible – Faith in the language of the modern world” (243 pages, US$7.00). The book lucked out beautifully arriving almost at the same time as NASA scientists announced finding traces of water on the planet Mars with all the tremendous possibilities that this scientific assertion implies for our terrestrial human race. Ever since the first human being set foot on the moon in 1969, now some 40 years ago, whether we like it or not, the modern world has arrived and is here to stay. The title of the English version of the book is significant and even more enticing: “Nebuchadnezzar's Dream, or the End of a Medieval Catholic Church. “ (Gorgias Press, New Jersey, USA)
Apart from the “immoral price” the US editors are charging (the words to me by the author, the 85 year old Austrian Jesuit priest) the book is well worth reading, re-reading and reading again. It puts into modern language for us young catholic believers of today (I am only 82 years old) the truths we learned when youngsters and often have not taken the time and effort to frame into our modern language. Read it and you’ll latch on to Sister Joan with the joy of the Spirit.
Justiniano de Managua
Thank you, Sr. Joan, for this
Thank you, Sr. Joan, for this very interesting piece. There are many things you say in the article about evolution that have been in my mind for the last few years. I believe as you do, that the "answer depends on humanity's rethinking its definition of God." For St. Francis of Assisi the two biggest questions we need to answer are: 1) Who are you, O God?, and 2) Who are we?
Great article/reflection. Not
Great article/reflection. Not really new however. While the Latin church pursued a perfect God for whom our role was to adulate and try to earn the points necessary to get into heaven at the end of the line; the Eastern church pursued a God who invited us to THEOPOESIS, to become as Christ in all ways. One might say that while Christian salvation in the west was and still means to die honorably and guarantee eternity in God's presence, elsewhere it means to embrace discipleship, become the hands and feet of a very live and very present God here, right here, in this life and not worry so much about the next. (The next will take care of itself if you but do as Christ today.)
Darwin and science have just given us words and concepts to explain what others had already intuited.
So many thinking, speaking
So many thinking, speaking responses! And yet, if we all, including Sr. Joan, would enlarge our appreciation for LISTENING, a most vital communication tool to understanding and authentic dialogue, we could enrich our discussion with one another and advance in our own fields of endeavor. Listen to whom? Listen to the experts (the better authorities because they have earned that authority) in biblical-historical scientific scholarship, philosophical development and scientific advancement for an understanding of what our faith is about in the twenty-first century. While NCRonline does a wonderful service for the community, to maintain it, the writers, readers and posters have to be continually challenged lest they succumb to boredom, thirst and starvation because the best of knowledge needs to be sought after.
We live in a jungle of communication – cell phones, blackberry devices, computers, newspapers, TV, etc. But what we want is quality of knowledge and understanding; not questionable, and mediocre to low quality information or even misinformation. How do we move from a jungle to an enraptured, responsive audience? Perhaps by listening more and speaking less to allow this best knowledge to be present. All of us need to earn entitlement; it’s not really ours by privilege, transaction, or winks, nods and looking the other way. But in our consumerism society we may think the latter is the case. When we are really learning, true dialogue -- not mere opinion giving prevails and that brings its own reward.
Thank you Sister Joan for
Thank you Sister Joan for teaching us that evolution made us and now we are going to become God. I'm so relieved to realize "God who goes before us to invite us on, to sustain us on the way, rather than a judging God who measures us by a past we did not shape."
Now we don't have to worry about Judgment.
From the God of Creation to
From the God of Creation to Sister Joan Chittister:
“Indeed I am the God of Creation as you say, dear lady. And My creation is ongoing. Whatever could be already is: H2O, for example, though thanks to you humans it’s less pristine than it once was. And whatever can be, will be: H1N1 in yet-to-evolve forms, for example, so stay alert the next few months, please!
“I let the evolutionary process decide its own outcomes. I don’t say ‘Do this because it’s good; don’t do that because it’s bad’. I am non-judgmental—no matter if the outcome is clean or filthy H2O or if a benign or real killer of an H1N1 or if the outcome is Adolf Hitler or Pope John XXIII. Whatever Evolution chooses, I’m okay with it. I haven’t yet interfered in its workings, and I don’t intend to, even though lots of earthly folks say I should.
“This, obviously, means I am a Humble God, and in all humility I acknowledge that. But am I a Beckoning God? Absolutely not, my dear! Evolution beckons; I don’t. And I most certainly don’t wait ‘for the best’ from humanity. Judgment is a trait that has evolved in human beings as part of the evolutionary process; however, for Me there is no bad/worse/worst or good/better/best scenario. I am non-judgmental the very while I keep the evolutionary process going. And it’s Evolution itself that sustains anything ‘on the way’. I do nothing of the kind.
“Clearly it comforts you to think of Me as God the Mother as well as God the Father. I am okay with that too—and non-judgmental about it. Yet it has led you to some wrong thinking about the evolutionary process. Evolution doesn’t understand your pain or love you for trying or help you over the bar. It only draws you onwards into becoming. No more, no less than that. But it is quite enough.
“I do ask, dear lady, that you cease implicating Me in your worldly projects and plans. Co-create along with Me as you will. That is your human right and responsibility within the evolutionary scheme of things. But whether you create on earth a Garden of Eden or the Mother of all Hells, everything will end in fire or ice (the evolutionary process will decide), then collapse into nothingness, awaiting another Big Bang to set a new universe in motion. I have seen this before. I will see it again. About that too I am non-judgmental.
“I don’t know whether you’ve delved into the work of those two modern-day atheists, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Their great virtue is in showing up Christian arguments for the existence of God as mostly worthless. They almost, in fact, persuade Me that I do not exist. Please note, I said ‘almost’.
“Thank you for hearing Me out, dear lady, and move with the evolutionary process as you will. However you do is not for me to judge. I am, as I said, non-judgmental.”
How ironic it is that we who
How ironic it is that we who see God as Creator, and who believe that all the world reflects the glory of God, would be so slow to see something that now seems obvious: that a creating God would make a creating world. What majesty of thought flows all through God's cosmos!
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