Sunday, October 16, 2022

10/16/22

During her reflection last Sunday, Pastor Robyn mentioned this quote from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:

The day is not far distant when humanity will realize that biologically it is faced with a choice between suicide and adoration.


In the context of Creationtide, which focuses on our relationship with God (or, for the less religiously inclined, think Spinoza's Nature) and the earth and the ways we care for the latter, I think it's the most honest and stark statement of where we are in the present. Right now, humanity has a choice to make, and its choice is between suicide in the form of our addiction to fossil fuels and an economic system that runs on greed and depends upon continual growth and consumption and adoration in the form of an alternative which consciously seeks to care for our common home and equitably and sustainably cultivates and shares our resources. And the latter will most certainly require a material and spiritual transformation. Just as Teilhard thought that matter and spirit are of one substance, so too is our salvation. We must materially change the way we reproduce ourselves (i.e., our socio-economic system) as much as we must change the way we consciously view and treat one another (i.e., our ethical, intellectual, spiritual POV). It's all interconnected. As he wrote in his essay "The Evolution of Chastity" in 1934:

The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, [humanity] will have discovered fire.


Adoration is another word for love. And without love, we cannot hope to avoid the destruction we're courting.

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