Tag Archives: evolution

Evolutionary Prayer

Posted on by
Reply
2Y7A1685.jpgwm

Hope = the other buds will bloom.

After much reading and reflection, I have come to the point where I can no longer pray to a tribal god, sometimes warlike, who is up there and out there, ready to rush in a rescue me from the powers and principalities, any evil which may befall me. William Cleary best describes the God I have found—an evolutionary God:

But Evolutionary Faith reminds us that “divine inspiring energy does not emanate from some external heavenly realm, but from within the depths of the creative process itself. The creative energy is an unambiguously inspirited and inspiring life-force.” In other words, we find the spirit of God everywhere and can speak to it and pray to it there-if we have situated ourselves firmly within the evolutionary story and realize the presence everywhere of a God alive and available. If evolution happened and is happening, then God-the spirit mother of life, the spirit father of creation, the Loving Mystery behind and within everything-is at work in it, around us, near us, within us. (William Cleary, Prayers to an Evolutionary God, location 267) Continue reading →

Ask the Beasts

Posted on by
Reply

 

The owlet has left the nest

The owlet has left the nest

IMG_7199_DxOElizabeth Johnson’s new book, Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love, is a beautifully written tome. The title is taken from the Book of Job-ask the beasts, they will tell you everything you need to know about God. Johnson examines Darwin’s Origin of the Species in detail. This gave me a whole new perspective on Darwin’s great contribution to the scientific world. I had some new learnings. Darwin’s theory has been and still is being misapplied as social Darwinism—some are less worthy than others. [Unfortunately, our current governmental budgetary practices reflect social Darwinsim in the raw!] Darwin’s theory goes far beyond survival of the fittest. Darwin brings out the communitarian, integrated aspect of natural selection. Darwin’s main focus was to show that creation was ongoing and plastic as opposed to a series of divine interventions from on high. Johnson summarizes the flux of evolving life as “extraordinary fecundity and perpetual perishing.” (212) Here I am reminded of Merton’s wonderful opening in his poem “Hagia Sophia”: Continue reading →

The Cosmic Christ

Posted on by
Reply
Rain nurturing spring growth

Rain nurturing spring growth

I awoke to a cloudy, humid, very overcast summer mountain morning. The low-hanging clouds have the mountains in their soft embrace as they reach toward the valley below. Many would not call this a Chamber of Commerce Day. If it were bright and sunny they would. The divine also shines through the cloudy overcast. The sun shines on the good and bad alike. The rain falls on the good and bad alike. This will be a good day for reflection, prayer and just catching up on things.

I continue to read Ilio Delio’s Christ in Evolution. I am also reading Bishop Spong’s latest book on the Gospel of John. Spong was the first to alert me to the understanding that evolution, as the process by which the cosmos is coming to completion, precludes a fall from a garden of original grace. There has never been a garden. The story of the fall is an etiological myth designed to help us understand human imperfection. Evolution is perfectly comfortable with humans emerging into greater consciousness, greater awareness, greater union with the Divine pulsing through the cosmos and every creature and created thing. Continue reading →

The Trinity Is Love

Posted on by
Reply
Spring Mountain Morning c. J. P. Mahon, 2003

Spring Mountain Morning
c. J. P. Mahon, 2003

All my life I have struggled with the Scholastic theology explaining the Trinity. I just cannot fathom co-substantiality and the like. Fortunately, modern science and modern theologians, like Ilio Delio and her mentor, Teilhard de Chardin, give me a better grasp of the mystery but it too is only a faint grasp.

The days of the Sky God are limited. I sense a return to the Eternal Feminine which was rudely deposed by the warrior gods of the invaders from the Steppes. Today we are beginning to understand that God, however, we describe God, is masculine and feminine. Continue reading →