The Uplands Lifelong Learning Institute is joining with Pleasant Hill Community Church, United Church of Christ, to bring a different kind of program to the area.

Ulli (formerly the Shalom Center for Continuing Education) has sponsored two-day educational programs or short courses meetings for six to eight weeks with live speakers or leaders.

On three days, Friday-Sunday, Dec. 6-8, the Institute and Church will bring the broadcast of an Omega Center Conference Webinar called Love at the Heart of the Cosmos: Living in Relational Wholeness to Pleasant Hill. The sessions will be shown on the large-screen and smaller video screens in Adshead Hall of Fletcher House for Assisted Living.

After each of the lectures, Ulli Group Discussions will be led by Ed Olson and Mark Canfield. Because of the different nature of this program, there will not be a potluck dinner on Friday night, but coffee and a light breakfast will be provided for the morning sessions.

On Friday, Dec. 6, the webinar will begin at 5:30 p.m. with an introduction by Ilia Delio. This webinar is an event committed to Teilhards vision for a new religion of the Earth for a new planet of life.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and is known for his theory that man is evolving, mentally and socially, toward a final spiritual unity.

Delio said, Teilhard envisioned a new type of energy flowing from the convergence of world religions, giving rise to a new religion of the Earth and a new ultrahuman community, electronically connected in a rising Cosmic Person.

The lecture beginning at 6 p.m. will be by Ursula King, a German theologian and scholar of religion, who specializes in gender, religion, and feminist theology. She has been a professor of theology and religious studies, president of Catherine of Siena College, and a prominent lecturer.

King received honorary doctorates from the universities of Edinburgh, Oslo and Dayton, OH, as well as research awards from the University of Delhi and Sorbonne, Paris. She is a Life Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts.

On Saturday, Dec. 7, from 7:45-8 a.m., a continental breakfast will be followed with the morning lecture by Kathleen Duffy, editor of Teilhard Studies who serves on the advisory boards of the American Teilhard Association and Cosmos and Creation, holding an honorary doctorate from Iona College.

She has published Teilhards Mysticism: Seeing the Inner Face of Evolution.

Following a break, there will be Teilhard & Centering Prayer led by Cynthia Bourgeault from 9:45-11:15 a.m. She is a modern-day mystic, Episcopal priest, writer and internationally known retreat leader. She is a core faculty member at the Center for Action and Contemplation, a member of the Global Peace Initiative for Women Contemplative Council and recipient of the 2014 Contemplative Voices award from Shalem Institute. Bourgeault is a founding director of both The Contemplative Society and the Aspen Wisdom School and author of several books.

The program will resume again from 4:30-6 p.m. with a lecture by John Haught. A theologian of science and religion, he will provide an analysis of what faith might mean in an age of science.

Haught is a distinguished research professor in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University and the author of 20 books, more than 100 book chapters and articles as well as hundreds of invited lectures and major academic presentations.

He offers fresh insight into the biblical nature of hope in order to clarify his position about those who differ with his approach the New Atheists and Creationists.

On Sunday, Dec. 8, from 7:45- 9:30 a.m., Ilia Delio will focus on exploring divine action in a world of evolution, complexity, emergence, quantum reality and artificial intelligence.

She earned doctorates in pharmacology from Rutgers University-School of Healthcare and Biomedical Sciences and in historical theology from Fordham University, NY. She is the recipient of a Templeton Course in Science and Religion award and the author of 17 books, many of which have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and German.

Ulli anticipates people will come and go throughout the three days of the conference.

Adshead Hall is on the lower level of the Elizabeth Fletcher House for Assisted Living, 40 Fletcher Dr. in Pleasant Hill off of Church Dr. across from the Community Church.

The webinar is free and open to the public, but donations will be appreciated.

This week in Pleasant Hill:

Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2 p.m. Documentary (Retirement Revolution) in Room 4, Pleasant Hill Community Church, United Church of Christ, Main St. and Church Dr.

Wednesday, Dec. 4, 5:30 p.m. Spaghetti supper, 6:15 p.m., and Taize Service in Pleasant Hill Community Church sanctuary, 67 Church Dr.

Wednesdays, 6 p.m. Bible study and prayer at the Pleasant Hill Baptist Mission at 39 Browntown Rd. near Main St.

Thursdays, 2-4 p.m. Fair Trade Room open in Pleasant Hill Community Church. Coffee, tea, chocolate, SERRV crafts from around the world. Supports co-ops and crafters with a fair price for their goods.

Thursday, Dec. 5, 7 p.m. Community Bridge at Fletcher House Dining Room. All welcome. Call 931-277-5005.

Friday, Dec. 6 Obed Wild and Scenic River 1.5-mile hike to the high rock outcrop of Lilly Bluff. Meet at 9:15 a.m. in the Aquatic Center parking lot on West Lake Rd. to carpool to the trailhead.

Tuesday, Dec. 10, noon Pleasant Hill emergency siren test.

Tuesday, Dec. 10, 6 p.m. Pleasant Hill Town Council meeting at Pleasant Hill Town Hall, 351 E. Main St. Call 931-277-3813.

Link:
PLEASANT HILL RAMBLINGS: 'Love at the Heart of the Cosmos' webinar set - Crossville Chronicle

This feature is coordinated by The Post-Standard/Syracuse.com and InterFaith Works of CNY. Follow this theme and author posted Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday.

The American holiday of Thanksgiving marks the grand opening of the Christmas shopping season. So by now you've been inundated with advertising: print, radio, television, and social media. How amid all this clamor for our money do we maintain our sense of the holy?

You might have heard: "You are not a human being having a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being having a human experience." In other words, what is important is who we are and how we relate to others, not what we have and how we acquired it.

The quote is most often attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. However, he was not the author. The real author gives us the real irony! It was part of an advertisement for Volkswagen, written for the company by motivational speaker Wayne Dyer.

May we all be blessed with the spirit of thanksgiving and gratitude!

Maggid Jim Brul is an ordained Jewish spiritual storyteller. A member of Temple Concord, Brul teaches storytelling and works with congregations and organizations to heal fractures of faith, class and ethnicity.

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CNY Inspirations: Sense of the holy can be found in quote - Syracuse.com

A friend of mine shares this story. She grew up with five siblings and an alcoholic father. The effect of her fathers alcoholism was devastating on her family. Heres how she tells the story:

By the time my father died, his alcoholism had destroyed our family. None of us kids could talk to each other anymore. Wed drifted apart to different parts of the country and had nothing to do with each other.

My mother was a saint and kept trying through the years to have us reconcile with each other, inviting us to gather for Thanksgiving and Christmas and the like, but it never worked. All her efforts were for nothing. We hated each other.

Then, as my mother lay dying of cancer, in hospice, bedridden, and eventually in a coma, we, her kids, gathered by her bedside, watching her die, and she, helpless and unable to speak, was able to accomplish what she couldnt achieve through all those years when she could speak. Watching her die, we reconciled.

We all know similar stories of someone in their dying, when they were too helpless to speak or act, powerfully impacting, more powerfully than they ever did in word or action, those around them, pouring out a grace that blessed their loved ones.

Sometimes, of course, this isnt a question of reconciling a family but of powerfully strengthening their existing unity.Such was the case in a family history shared by Carla Marie Carlson, in her book,Everyday Grace.

Her family was already closely knit, but Carlson shares how her mothers dying strengthened those family bonds and graced all the others who witnessed her dying:

Those who took the opportunity to be with my Mom during that journey have told me that their lives were forever changed. It was a remarkable time, which I will always treasure. Lessons of acceptance and courage were abundant as she struggled with the realities of a dying body. It was dramatic and intense, but yet filled with peace and gratitude.

Most anyone who has ever sat in vigil around a loved one who was dying can share a similar story.

Theres a lesson here and a mystery. The lesson is that we dont just do important things for one another and impact one anothers lives by what we actively do for one another; we also do life-changing things for one another in what we passively absorb in helplessness. This is the mystery of passivity which we see, paradigmatically, played out in what Jesus did for us.

As Christians, we say that Jesusgave his life for usand that hegave his death for us, but we tend to think of this as one and the same thing. Its not. Jesus gave his life for usthrough his activity; he gave his death for usthrough his passivity.These were two separate movements.

Like the woman described earlier who tried for years to have her children reconcile with one another through her activity, through her words and actions, and then eventually accomplished that through the helplessness and passivity of her deathbed, so, too, with Jesus.

For three years he tried in every way to make us understand love, reconciliation, and faith, without full effect. Then, in less than 24 hours, in his helplessness, when he couldnt speak, in his dying, we got the lesson. Both Jesus and his mother were able, in their helplessness and passivity, to give the world something that they were unable to give as effectively in their power and activity.

Unfortunately, this is not something our present culture, with its emphasis on health, productivity, achievement, and power very much understands.

We no longer much understand or value the powerful grace that is given off by someone dying of a terminal illness, nor the powerful grace present in a person with a disability, or indeed the grace thats present in our own physical and personal disabilities.

Nor do we much understand what we are giving to our families, friends, and colleagues when we, in powerlessness, have to absorb neglect, slights, and misunderstanding. When a culture begins to talk about euthanasia, it is an infallible indication that we no longer understand the grace within passivity.

In his writings, Father Henri Nouwen makes a distinction between what he terms our achievements and our fruitfulness.Achievementsstem more directly from our activities: What have we positively accomplished? What have we actively done for others? And our achievements stop when we are no longer active.

Fruitfulness, on the other hand, goes far beyond what we have actively accomplished and is sourced as much by what we have passively absorbed as by what we actively produced. The family described above reconciled not because of their mothers achievements, but because of her fruitfulness. Such is the mystery of passivity.

Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, in his spiritual classic,The Divine Milieu,tells us that we are meant to help the world through both our activities and our passivities, through both what we actively give and through what we passively absorb.

See original here:
The grace within passivity - Angelus News

Rob Field, director of Center for Spiritual Wisdom, will be the presenter for the next Sunday gathering at Elk Haven Wellness Center on Oct. 13 at 5 p.m. His topic will be Holy Chaos? Looking for Meaning In Turbulent Times.

The event is open to the public.

Today, many people are asking, Why is our society become so contentious? Why does it feel like things are falling apart? Can anything good come from all the chaos?

Drawing on wise souls, past and present, including Integral Theory founder Ken Wilber, as well as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Field will offer his personal response to these questions.

More than anything, I want to spark the kind of conversation Id enjoy being part of, said Field. My favorite part of these gatherings is the give and take.

Elk Haven Wellness Center is located at 100 Elks Club Road, just off Park Avenue, in Brevard. Doors will open at 5 p.m. for informal conversation and light refreshments.

The presentation will begin at 5:30 p.m., with questions and conversation following at 6 p.m. The gathering will end at 6:30 p.m.

Donations will be accepted at the door, and gifts of $10 or more will be acknowledged with a glass of Green Heart organic juice or a Reason to Bake gluten-free cookie. All donations are welcome, and will help defray the costs associated with the centers Sunday series.

Further information is available at http://www.Center4SpiritualWisdom.org

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'Holy Chaos?' Is Theme For Oct. 13 Event Searching For Meaning In Turbulent Times - The Transylvania Times

Dear Dr. Fox: I have a small white Maltese. He is 8 years old, and in the past year, has started getting brownish red fur wherever he licks face, feet etc. I feel it is allergies, but dont know to what. Otherwise he is healthy. I do give him filtered water.

Have you any suggestions for what I can try? B.M., West Palm Beach, Florida

Dear B.M.: This is a very prevalent problem in dogs, and is especially evident in those with white coats. Red fur staining is caused by a compound called porphyrin. Porphyrins are iron-containing molecules produced when the body breaks down red blood cells. They are removed from the body primarily through feces, but are also in urine, tears and saliva.

Brown fur staining is primarily caused by an infection with the yeast Malassezia. This is the yeast that is responsible for skin and ear infections in dogs.

It is possible that your dog has both conditions. Excessive eye discharge can mean chronic eye infection or blocked tear ducts, while dental problems common in small breeds can lead to excessive salivation. Both secretions carry porphyrins that stain the fur.

Dogs with seasonal allergies may lick their paws and legs, the saliva staining the fur red. Then when brownish discoloration develops in the moist fur, the yeast infection sets in. The yeast thrives where the fur is moist, especially in the external ear canals, under the eyes and around the lower jaws, where the fur is moist from saliva and drinking.

I would advise a good grooming/clipping, and cleaning the affected areas with one part hydrogen peroxide in two parts water. Dry him well, then apply apple cider vinegar, rub it well into his fur, then wipe him semi-dry after 10 to 15 minutes. You may need someone to hold your dog and avoid getting any of these applications near the eyes.

If your dog has not had a recent wellness examination, you should take him in my fear is that he dog has chronic dental issues, and the remedy I offer will not fix the problem.

Dear Readers: Not One More Vet is an online veterinary support group. The group was founded in 2014 by Dr. Nicole McArthur. It has grown into an international group of veterinarians who come together on Facebook to laugh, cry and lend a supportive ear with their colleagues. from the groups website, nomv.org

This is so very important, because the incidence of suicide in this profession is about twice that of the general population. Non-veterinarians working in animal protection, cruelty investigations and rescue work also need support; they, too, experience the burdens of empathy, frustration and despair that can come from dealing with a culture that has so little regard for nonhuman life. Compassion stress and compassion fatigue are among the personal indices of well-being.

As the late Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin famously wrote, We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. By extension, dogs, cats and other sentient life forms are spiritual beings having a dog, cat or other experience, respectively. Accepting this view inspires a sense of reverential respect for all life, and a responsibility to care for all creatures great and small. This means we suffer with, and for, them when they are in need of care. Veterinarians and others in caring professions can indeed experience burnout and depression. Many even consider ending, and actually do end, their own lives an incalculable loss that support groups such as Not One More Vet can help prevent.

Fewer animals being taken into shelters, euthanized: Good news! Factors such as cultural change, an increase in spaying and neutering, pets being returned to owners and a trend toward rescue adoption have reduced the number of animals in big-city shelters that are euthanized by more than 75% since 2009. Though some no-kill shelters report being pushed beyond their capacity, shelters have become more sophisticated and collaborative. (The New York Times, 9/3)

Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Foxs website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.

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Animal Doctor: Fur staining in dogs is caused by porphyrin or infection - Tulsa World

According to Isaac the Syrian, a famous 7th-century bishop and theologian, a person whos genuinely humble gives off a certain scent that other people will sense and that even animals will pick up, so that wild animals, including snakes, will fall under its spell and never harm that person.

Heres his logic: A humble person, he believes, has recovered the smell of paradise and in the presence of such a person one does not feel judged and has nothing to fear, and this holds true even for animals. They feel safe around a humble person and are drawn to him or her. No wonder people like St. Francis of Assisi could talk to birds and befriend wolves.

But, beautiful as this all sounds, is this a pious fairytale or is it a rich, archetypal metaphor? I like to think its the latter, that this is a rich metaphor, and perhaps even something more. Humility, indeed, does have a smell, the smell of the earth, of the soil, and of paradise.

But how? How can a spiritual quality give off a physical scent?

Well, were psychosomatic, creatures of both body and soul. Thus, in us, the physical and the spiritual are so much part of one and the same substance that its impossible to separate them out from each other.

To say that were body and soul is like saying sugar is white and sweet and that whiteness and sweetness can never be put into separate piles. Theyre both inside the sugar. Were one substance, inseparable, body and soul, and so were always both physical and spiritual.

So, in fact, we dofeelphysical things spiritually, just as wesmellspiritual things through our physical senses. If this is true, and it is, then, yes, humility does give off a scent that can be sensed physically, and Isaac the Syrians concept is more than just a metaphor.

But its also a metaphor: The wordhumilitytakes its root in the Latin word,humus,meaning soil, ground, and earth. If one goes with this definition then the most humble person you know is the most earthy and most grounded person you know.

To be humble is to have ones feet firmly planted on the ground, to be in touch with the earth, and to carry the smell of the earth. Further still, to be humble is to take ones rightful place as a piece of the earth and not as someone or something separate from it.

The renowned mystic and scientist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, expressed this sometimes in his prayers. During the years when, as a paleontologist he worked for long stretches in the isolated deserts of China, he would sometimes compose prayers to God in a form he called,A Mass for the World.

Speaking to God as a priest, he would identify his voice with that of the earth itself, as that place within physical creation where the earth itself, the soil of the earth, could open itself and speak to God. As a priest, he didnt speakforthe earth; he spokeasthe earth, giving it voice, in words to this effect:

Lord, God, I stand before you as a microcosm of the earth itself, to give it voice: See in my openness, the worlds openness, in my infidelity, the worlds infidelity; in my sincerity, the worlds sincerity, in my hypocrisy, the worlds hypocrisy; in my generosity, the worlds generosity; in my attentiveness, the worlds attentiveness; in my distraction, the worlds distraction; in my desire to praise you, the worlds desire to praise you; and in my self-preoccupation, the worlds forgetfulness of you. For I am of the earth, a piece of earth, and the earth opens or closes to you through my body, my soul, and my voice.

This is humility, an expression of genuine humility. Humility should never be confused, as it often is, with a wounded self-image, with an excessive reticence, with timidity and fear, or with an overly sensitive self-awareness.

Too common is the notion that a humble person is one who is self-effacing to a fault, who deflects praise (even when its deserved), who is too shy to trust opening himself or herself in intimacy, or who is so fearful or self-conscious and worried about being shamed so as to never step forward and offer his or her gifts to the community.

These can make for a gentle and self-effacing person, but because we are denigrating ourselves when to deny our own giftedness, our humility is false, and deep down we know it, and so this often makes for someone who nurses some not-so-hidden angers and is prone to being passive-aggressive.

The most humble person you know is the person whos the most grounded, that is, the person who knows shes not the center of the earth but also knows that she isnt a second-rate piece of dirt either. And that person will give off a scent that carries both the fragrance of paradise (of divine gift) as well as the smell of the earth.

See the original post here:
The scent of humility - Angelus News

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.We should like to skip the intermediate stages.We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;your ideas mature graduallylet them grow,let them shape themselves, without undue haste.Dont try to force them on,as though you could be today what time(that is to say, grace and circumstancesacting on your own good will)will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spiritgradually forming within you will be.Give Our Lord the benefit of believingthat his hand is leading you,and accept the anxiety of feeling yourselfin suspense and incomplete. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes (Author of ... - Goodreads

A collection of quotes by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on spirituality, joy, faith, love, peace, philosophy, patience, life, trust, wisdom, God and religion.

Quick Facts

Famous As:Philosopher & Jesuit Priest

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a renowned French philosopher, palaeontologist and geologist famous for his unique theory of evolution of man. His theory of evolution threw light on a social perspective which stated that man was evolving mentally and socially towards a spiritual unity. He was known to possess a high intellect in various fields including spirituality and science. He taught physics and chemistry in Cairo and studed theology in Hastings. His first notable work was his essay titled La Vie Cosmique (Cosmic Life) which reflected his scientific and philosophical thoughts and further went on to become a Jesuit. He wrote several essays and even gave lectures at the Catholic Institute. During his stay in China, he travelled extensively to conduct geological expeditions which helped him draw a geological map of China. He also wrote many books on spirituality before writing the most notable book of his life titled Le Phenomena Humaine. He was honoured with the Mendel Medal for his significant contributions in the field of Human Palaeontology. Here is a compilation of quotations and sayings which have been extracted from the vast sea of his work. Go through the most notable and motivational quotes and thoughts by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Do not forget that the value and interest of life is not so much to do conspicuous things...as to do ordinary things with the perception of their enormous value.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

It doesn't matter if the water is cold or warm if you're going to have to wade through it anyway.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

You have told me, O God, to believe in hell. But you have forbidden me to think...of any man as damned

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The most telling and profound way of describing the evolution of the universe would undoubtedly be to trace the evolution of love.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

By means of all created things, without excaption, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, when in fact we live steeped in its burning layers

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

By virtue of Creation, and still more the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

God is not remote from us. He is at the point of my pen, my (pick) shovel, my paint brush, my (sewing) needle - and my heart and thoughts.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The whole life lies in the verb seeing.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate one another.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

He recognized with absolute certainty the empty fragility of even the noblest theorizings as compared with the definitive plenitude of the smallest fact grasped in its total, concrete reality.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Research is the highest form of adoration

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

In the end, only the truth will survive.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The most empowering relationships are those in which each partner lifts the other to a higher possession of their own being.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The farther and more deeply we penetrate into matter, by means of increasingly powerful methods, the more we are confounded by the interdependence of its parts.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

In the shadow of death may we not look back to the past, but seek in utter darkness the dawn of God.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The quintessential good and beauty in life is what each has to offer to others valuing the gesture ourselves into confluence with the Word of God.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

It is the destiny of things real to destroy those that are artice.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I am not a human being enjoying a spiritual life, I am a spiritual being enjoying a human life.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

For in the nature of things everything that is faith must rise, and everything that rises must converge.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

As a result, man is the only successful type which has remained as a single interbreeding group or species, and has not radiated out into a number of biologically separated assemblages

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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34 Famous Pierre Teilhard De Chardin Quotes That Will ...

Was the Jesuit priest and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin really a racist, fascist, and even genocidal opponent of human dignity? I had thought that, at least among educated Catholics, this question was almost dead, and that holdout pockets of hostility might be vanishing for good, especially after several recent popes admiringly cited Teilhards cosmic vision for its theological beauty and Eucharistic power.

But my optimism was premature. In a December 2016 article in Philosophy and Theology titled Dangerous Tendencies of Cosmic Theology: The Untold Legacy of Teilhard de Chardin, John Slattery writes that from the 1920s until his death in 1955, Teilhard de Chardin unequivocally supported racist eugenic practices, praised the possibilities of the Nazi experiments, and looked down upon those who [sic] he deemed imperfect humans. Slattery, a recent graduate of Notre Dames Department of Theology, claims that a persistent attraction to racism, fascism, and genocidal ideas explicitly lay the groundwork for Teilhards famous cosmological theology. This, he informs us, is a link which has been largely ignored in Teilhardian research.

A more recent article by the same critic in Religion Dispatches (May 2018) is entitled Pierre Teilhard de Chardins Legacy of Eugenics and Racism Cant Be Ignored. In it, Slattery hangs his case on eight stray citations from Teilhards letters and other scattered writings. Most of the quotes present what were speculative inquiries on the part of Teilhardquestions that countless other thoughtful people have asked, including many Catholicsrather than systematically developed theses for public consumption. Their style is provocative and interrogatory, not declarative. Exactly what Teilhard really meant by them is, in every single case, highly debatable.

And yet Slattery holds these excerpts out to us as undeniable evidence that Teilhards true legacy is one of hostility to Catholic affirmation of human dignity, racial justice, and concern for the disadvantaged. Still more important, however, is Slatterys claim that it was Teilhards commitment to these evils that grounds and undergirds his cosmological theology. Nothing could be more preposterous.

Slattery doesnt deny that the bulk of Teilhards religious writings are uncontroversially Christian and in tune with Catholic teaching. Yet he ignores this fact in defining what he calls Teilhards legacy. Though he surely knows that most readers will be unfamiliar with the man and his thought, he has decided to expose them first to what he considers Teilhards most sinister side. In the process he takes a thimbleful of quotes out of context, posts them on a blank background, and says nothing substantive about the remaining 99.9 percent of Teilhards work. Failing to take into account the general architecture of Teilhards thought always leads to the kinds of exaggeration and distortion that Slattery commits.

He begins by reciting the best-known of Teilhards treasurable remarks: If humanity ever captures the energy of love, it will be the second time in history that we have discovered fire. Noting that millions who tuned into the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle heard these lines recited in a moving sermon by Episcopal Bishop Michael Bruce Curry, Slattery remarks that listeners who swooned over them were unaware of the poisonous roots of Teilhards religious worldview. He proceeds to reveal the rot he finds in a package of eight passages cherry-picked from Teilhards voluminous letters and writings. I shall condense the most offensive of these below, but I want to begin my response to Slattery by summarizing what other students of Teilhards work consider to be his real legacy. Only after becoming acquainted with his core ideas can we interpret rightly what Slattery finds so offensive in Teilhards work.

Seasoned Teilhard scholars are aware of the questionable remarks he points to; but the seeming offensiveness of such comments fades into the shadows when we read them in terms of the fundamental principles guiding Teilhards scientifically informed vision of the world and God. Here are four of these fundamental principles:

The universe (as science has demonstrated) is still coming into being. Hence the world is not yet perfected. Theologically, this means that creation remains unfinished, and that humans, who are part of this universe, may contribute significantly to its making. The opportunity to participate in building the earth is a cornerstone of human dignity. (It is also a teaching of Vatican II.) The fact that our creativity can sometimes lead to monstrous outcomes does not absolve us of the obligation to improve the world and ourselves. Taking advantage of this opportunity is sometimes dangerous, but it is also essential to sustaining hope and a zest for living, Teilhard maintains. Moreover, nothing clips the wings of hope more severely than the now obsolete theological idea that the universe was completed once and for all in the beginning, and that there is little or nothing we can do to make it new.

To create is to unite. The world comes into beingand becomes newby a process of unification. Scientifically understood, the emerging cosmos becomes intelligible only by gradually bringing increasingly more complex forms of coherence out of its primordial state of diffusion and atomic dispersal. As the universe in the course of time becomes more complex, it also becomes more conscious. Theologically, this principle is implied in Christian hope as summed up in Jesus prayer that all may be one and in the Pauline expectation that everything will be brought to a head in Christ, in whom all things consist. Teilhard stated explicitly that his whole theology of nature is consistent with the expectations of the Apostle Paul and the Fourth Evangelist: Lord make us one. His true legacy lies in his rich Christian sense of a universe converging on Christ and being brought into final union in what he called God-Omega.

True union differentiates. As the creative love of God brings increasing unity to the unfinished universe, it is Gods will that the diversity of creation increases as well, including the emergence of free and unique human persons. In Christ, God seeks to become continually more incarnate in the world not via an order imposed on it, but by a differentiating, liberating, and personalizing communion with it. Many distortions of Teilhards intentions, including Slatterys, stem from a failure to understand what Teilhard means by true union. As we shall see, to miss the deeply Christian motif of differentiating union in his writings is to do him grave injustice.

The world rests on the future as its sole support. As we follow the course of cosmic history from its remote past into the future, Teilhard observes, we discover a law of recurrence in which something new, more complex, and (eventually) more conscious has always been taking shape up ahead. Scientifically speaking, we now know that subatomic elements were organized around atomic nuclei; atoms were gathered into molecules; molecules into cells; and cells into complex organisms, some of which made the leap into thought. The most important kinds of emergence can occur, however, only if the elements allow themselves to be organized around a new and higher center, one that lifts them up to a more elaborately differentiated unity. To experience true union, true being, true goodness, and true beauty, therefore, we must allow ourselveslike Abraham, the prophets, and Jesusto be grasped by the Future.

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Trashing Teilhard | Commonweal Magazine

Editors note: As Creation magazine has been continuously published since 1978, weare publishing some of the articles from the archives for historical interest, such as this. For teaching andsharing purposes, readers are advised to supplement these historic articles with more up-to-date ones suggested in the Related Articles and Further Reading below.

By G.J. Keane

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Pierre Teilhard de Chardins most obvious claim to fame was his overwhelming acceptance of evolution, and an unquestionable passion to try to fit Christianity into it.

He was born in Auvergne, France, in 1881 and entered the Catholic Society of Jesus at 18. He spent the next three years teaching physics and chemistry at Cairo, followed by four years theological training at Hastings, England. He developed a seemingly unquenchable thirst for palaeontology and spent much of his adult life in China searching for mans evolutionary ancestors. He was involved in the excavation of the so-called Peking Man in 1929. Throughout his life he found he was unable to totally harmonize traditional Catholicism with the scientific framework of evolution, and incapable of openly flouting the orders of his superiors.

In the end he became Chardin the mystic, and his thoughts were published only after his death.

But Teilhard was also involved in the Piltdown hoax. This skull, which was later discovered by workers at the British Museum to have been made of parts of a human skull and the jaw of an orang-utan, had been chemically stained to indicate great age, and the teeth filed to resemble human teeth. A probing yet charitable analysis of Teilhards probable role in the hoax has been published by prominent evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould.1

Teilhards unquestioning acceptance of evolution, together with his passion for mysticism, led him to propose ideas which were clearly incompatible with the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church. He had entered the priesthood in 1899, only 30 years after the First Vatican Council (1870), which stated:

After having studied 10 years for the priesthood, Teilhard would have been familiar with the 1870 Catholic position against evolution. Despite this he was convinced evolution was true.

Further, he believed strongly that a church which accepted the Genesis account of Creation was wedded to an outmoded and unscientific outlook. In his framework, such a Church was out of touch with reality and would lag behind the rest of the world as it plunged into the 20th century. He felt it was vital for the church to adapt its theology to harmonise with modern evolutionary theory.3

Such a harmony became his lifes mission and the end product was his formulation of a mystical evolutionary theology.

The church, until the time of Charles Darwin, had promoted an objective creation-based view of reality. In other words, the universe is comprised of real, distinct things. Chardin sought to change this! He proposed that the universe did not consist of real things, since everything was evolving and converging towards a future goal called Omega. The only thing that must give it unity, therefore, is the spiritual or mystical realm. God must be the only unifying force. According to Teilhard, God somehow inserted himself into the evolutionary process, and Christ the force drawing everything towards the goal of Omega.

He did not accept the God of Genesis who was clearly portrayed as the Creator of all things.

De Chardin wrote:

His ideas have been the centre of much controversy within and without the Catholic Church. His most definitive work,The Phenomenon of Man (published by others after his death), contains Chardins so-called scientific treatise. It outlines all of his standard evolutionary facts and simply glosses over difficult questions.

The origin of the Earth he stated was purely accidental:

The origin of the first cell provided no problem to de Chardin. He wrote:

On the reproduction of cells, he claims that:

For the evolution of mans consciousness he proposed the concept of noogenesis. He stated:

For Teilhard, evolution is so central to truth that the word creation does not even rate inclusion in his books index. He wrote:

And where does original sin fit into Teilhards views? There is no mention of Adam, Eve, Satan or the term original sin in his book. And without original sin, there is no need of the Saviour Christ, and without a need of a Saviour, there can be no Christian Church.

De Chardin has become a cult figure to many after his death, particularly to academic evolutionists among Catholics and Anglicans. Many still believe his ideas were ahead of his time, and that his thinking will inevitably be accepted by the official teaching bodies of the Catholic Church. The reality is however that his confused speculation has only contributed to further obscuring the notion that God has revealed objective truth to man through the Holy Scriptures. Mysticism has always resulted in common sense being replaced by nonsense.

Teilhards speculative theories were not scientific, but metaphysical! They depended for plausibility upon evolution being historically true. As the credibility of evolution theory diminishes, his writings reduce to highly imaginative anti-Christian fantasy. During his lifetime Chardin was refused permission to publish his theories, and in fairness to him it must be stated that he remained obedient to his superiors.

As one Catholic theologian has pointed out: Teilhards fundamental error was to seek for something more elementary than being as the basis of his metaphysics. He thought he had found it in the concept of unification, but he was mistaken Created being is composite and oriented towards an end distinct from itself, not in so far as it is being, but in so far as it is created.12

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Teilhard De Chardin - creation.com