The word “emerging” could best describe the journey into our understanding of the story of life – because our understanding is always emerging.  Different wisdom traditions down through time have played a significant role in the breaking open of this understanding – classical wisdom, feminine wisdom, indigenous wisdom and science wisdom.  In this new age of scientific knowledge we are now being invited into a renewed understanding and appreciation of our wondrous origin, of that stupendous explosion of energy that flared forth into being 13.7 billion years ago.  We are invited to allow the sacred story of the Universe to captivate our imagination, to follow its call into fullness of life as it weaves its way into our heart, mind, body and spirit so that nothing, nothing again separates us from the love for which each and every aspect of life is made. 

Under the Emperor Constantine in 313CE, Christian talk about God began its journey into being bound into institutional expressions that made words about God into absolutes.  The diversity of forms reality takes, the mysterious reality of the sacred body of God became reduced to a limited point of view, to a certain interpretation of Scripture and to specific formulations that, although they contain undeniable truths, do not exhaust the whole process through which truth unfolds.  Our images of God became enmeshed in a patriarchal structure, a structure that was dualistic in thinking and hierarchical in action.  It orientated us towards certitudes, separated body from spirit, just from unjust, masculine from feminine, heaven from earth.  It taught us to wish for heaven and to see our earth home as a “valley of tears,” a place that we are merely passing through rather than a source of Divine revelation.  It cut us off from our bodies and from our intimate belonging to the body of earth.  We learned to dream of heaven, while disassociating ourselves from the dream of earth.  But heaven is not our mother and our earliest relationship is not with an ideal heaven but with our mother’s body, earth’s body.  Christology became entrapped in a disembodied theology.  In disembodying ourselves we disembodied Jesus and so conditioned God’s love. 

But today a new consciousness is dawning.  There is a re-awakening to our real power as it emerges out of the shadows of patriarchy, a naming and letting go of images of God that are no longer life-giving.  In every social and religious system we see an unravelling of the human delusion of control.  This dawning realisation is deeper than thought, emotion or reason.  It is luring us into a renewed surrender to mystery and to the expanding vision of our sacred origin. We stand on a threshold moment.
 

What our world now needs are dreamers of this vision, dreamers who refuse to tame the wildness of the mystery. Dreamers who dare the surrender to the dream of earth, for it is here that we must go, as Jesus went for the guidance needed for the “great work” that lies ahead? Will we dare to go out beyond the boundaries of what we once knew and bring forward from the depths of our belonging to the community of life, the living story of our intimate connectedness to all life, refusing to be co-opted or domesticated by any political, economic, educational or religious system that threatens any aspect of the fabric of our planetary life and of the fullness of life that is the Divine inheritance of all?

©Mary Teresa McCormack

Ireland lost one of its great mystics with the death of John O Donoghue in January of 2008.  For this wonderful philosopher and poet wonder kept every experience fresh and original.  In his book ‘Eternal Echoes’ he reminds us that “wonder is the child of mystery.  It calls your heart to thanks and praise.”  Wonder is our first and greatest treasure.  In fact it is at the very core of our existence.  Nurturing it is a life long spiritual quest. It is wonder that awakens us to the delight and rapture of being alive; to an awareness of and a relationship with the unknown, with mystery.  In opening to wonder and the encountering of mystery we are led into a way of living that embraces our rootedness and connectedness to all that is.

The language of spirituality is a language of relationship.  Relationship is our greatest challenge. It constantly encourages hospitality, the welcoming of difference, of the strangeness in myself and the stranger in the other.   Ecological spirituality invites an awareness of neighbour that includes all creation.  It is an embrace of the human story and earth story as one story.  The coming home to God cannot happen in isolation from the homecoming to oneself, to the other and to all life.

The language of the universe is a language beyond words, the language that Leonardo Boff describes as “sleeping in the stone, dreaming in the flower and becoming awake in humanity.”  It is a language of wonder, of the heart and the senses, of the trees and the rivers, the sunset and the dawn.  It is a language that finds the Divine signature in the landscapes of our hearts and of our earth. 

As we learn to co-operate with the Spirit of our inner and outer landscape we grow in appreciation of how we are a part of and not a part from the Body of Creation.  Jesus did not start and finish with his own story.  He needed Abraham, Mary of Nazareth and his disciples.  He also needed the landscape of his bioregion, the desert, the sea, the mountains, the birds of the air, the lilies in the field…..It was his outer landscape that shaped his inner world.  Out of the depths of his contemplation on the rhythm of his belonging in the Earth emerged his wonderful images of his belonging in God. 

The story is told of a telephone operator who each day received a call from a woman who requested the exact time. Finally the operator asked the caller why she phoned every day. “Because,” responded the caller, “I am the woman responsible for ringing the Angelus bell at noon.” “That is really strange,” the operator replied, “because every day, exactly at noon. I set my watch by your bell.”  This is a simple story and yet such an accurate parable of life. We are interdependent on one another.  Each life has more far-reaching effects on others than is often ever realised.  “Before you finished eating your breakfast this morning” said Martin Luther King Jn “you’ve depended on half the world. This is the way our universe is structured.”  Everything about who I am, how I live and the choices I make is connected to everything else. 

Thomas Berry says that “if creating a new culture for the ecological age is the next phase of our experience, creating an integral spirituality may well be the next phase of the Christian tradition.”  An ecological spirituality is a spirituality of interconnectedness.  It invites an awakening as Einstein says “from the delusion of separateness.” In every moment I can practice life-giving connections by consciously tracing the links connecting me with every other being. Any starting point is good – the weekly shopping basket being an ideal place to begin.  Love begins when we discover connection.  A positive or negative thought, an encouraging or discouraging word, choosing a Fair Trade product or not – each choice contributes to the quality of life for all.

In every moment each of us finds ourselves the locus of the kingdom of God, right at the point where the universe is breaking into a new form.  May we continually wonder at the Spirit erupting in the new, open to the extravagance of the unfolding, embrace the gift that is revealed and offer thanks for the diversity of ways the Word is constantly being made fresh and original.

©Mary Teresa McCormack