Cosmic Consciousness we are all one St Mary’s Matters St Mary’s Matters Issue 43 I 2016 I $31 Contents The Ferment of Becoming Trevor Parton Myth of Separateness David Cantwell Cosmic Unconsciousness Tony Carroll The Necessary Miracle of Touch Ann Ooms Cosmic Consciousness David Pincus From the Stillness Michael Tansky A Reflection on Cosmic Consciousness Barbara Fingleton Cosmic Consciousness Peeling Onions Bob Aldred owever we interpret this topic, one thing is clear. HWe need to take responsibility for the bit of the Creating Room to Read cosmos that lies at our door. Kathy Hedeman We take care of each other, we rail against the injustices Cosmic Consciousness we see being perpetrated in our name, and we have Carolyn Vincent respect for the planet on which we live. A Cosmic Experiment As a community and as individuals we can move Shar Ryan towards a sense of interdependence and connection Creator of the Cosmos with all about us. Anne Maguire Re-Imagining Luke We are lucky to have such a long standing relationship Greg Jenks with Micah. This helps us to pursue our goals of justice and peace. And the work we share with this body of Awareness people reminds us to keep living by the words of its Brian O’Hanlon eponymous prophet: Sonnet Live justly Robert Perrier Love tenderly Learning from a Place of Conflict Walk justly. Anne Brown Clearly this topic resonated with the creative minds At the Beautiful Brookfield Spirituality Centre in the community as a number of excellent poems Photostory were submitted. These included one titled ‘Creative Presence’, the author of which I cannot remember. If SMX - Worth Pursuing the Dream? s/he lets me know I will acknowledge it in the next Terry Fitzpatrick edition. Within Me, In This Moment Our opening story is an extract from a Christian Shiloh Moore Brothers’ publication and sets the tone exactly for this topic. Last Chance Margaret Clifford If you enjoy the content of this issue or if you disagree with what you read, do please write to the editor. We Christmas at St Mary’s are happy to publish your letter in the next edition. Photostory T he Editor Creative Presence 2 St Mary’s Matters The Ferment of Becoming ook around and see what is happening present to us in almost every aspect of ‘divinization.’ Lto our world. Ferment is everywhere. its beauty and poignancy. The ferment of The human is in trouble, the animals are becoming continues as an epic story still Brian Swimme, speaking about Teilhard in trouble, the earth is in trouble. The striving for fulfilment. de Chardin, in an interview entitled The rhetorical question is always ‘What is Divinization of the Cosmos explains: God going on’. There is no single answer to this The other quote is from process is present from the very beginning, but question. It depends on what your world philosopher Alfred North Whitehead: ‘You in an implicit form, and the universe is view, your cosmology is. can only interpret the past in terms of the accomplishing this great work of making present. The present is all that you have.’ divinity explicit. Why do humans have restless hearts? To (Body and Spirit - Lecture 3) This is taken borrow the language of Pierre Teilhard de to mean, as Whitehead explains, that as The Passamaquaddy people see Chardin we could say that it was a sign of you are faced with interpreting the past themselves as participating in this work the universe in a ‘ferment of becoming.’ it can only be dealt with satisfactorily if in a unique way. I think this is also ‘The It seems that the Universe has been you bring to it your own contemporary Great Work’ of Thomas Berry. In this book ‘becoming’ for the past 13.7 billion years, metaphysical viewpoint. Thomas is offering us a cosmology to and has now reached the ‘restless heart’ help us define ourselves in this 21st stage. Everything serves a purpose Century. in an intimately connected universe. Everything has a role in the continuously Back in 1926 Teilhard de Chardin in the self-organising epic in which we final paragraphs of his celebrated The participate. If we want to know our role Divine Milieu wrote about this creative in this epic, I think we have to ask our ferment: hearts this question but not expect an answer in grammatical English. Jerusalem, lift up your head. Look at the immense crowds of those who The scripting of the Universe Story build and those who seek. All over the is not set in concrete, except for the world, men are toiling- in laboratories, guarantee that what we have done in in studios, in deserts, in factories, the past and what we do in the present in the vast social crucible. The constrains what we may do in the future. ferment that is taking place by their The hidden and mysterious agency that instrumentality in art and science and fuels our universe and that none of us thought is happening for your sake. knows precisely, manifests as an innate Open, then, your arms and your heart, creativity and spontaneity present in like Christ your Lord, and welcome our planet, that has brought us through the waters, the flood and the sap of several extinction processes to where we humanity. are on our beautiful blue-green paradise, If you bring to it the same mindset and that has gifted us from the time when in which it was established, then do This last page is well worth a read for we were all stardust, engaged then in its not expect progress. Do not expect those unfamiliar with his work. He own ‘ferment of becoming.’ There are two transformation. Einstein and Thomas wrote this at a time when the notion quotes that might be apposite here. One Berry remind us that the problems of the of the earth community was not yet is from Teilhard de Chardin: ‘...everything present cannot be solved by the same well accepted in the West, and his work is the sum of the past’ and ‘...nothing mindset that created them. comes across as being somewhat human- is comprehensible except through its centred. history.’ and the one is The American Indian tradition gives us an insight into the emergence of the human Thomas Berry’s contribution to the In one sense our bodies/minds carry in the story of cosmogenesis. thinking of Teilhard with which he was the traces and results of the moment of very familiar, is to offer us a deeper the great flaring forth, the formation of This tradition is extremely cosmological. connection to the more than human stars and galaxies from the primordial Their clothes, tents and ceremonies world and link it more closely to our interstellar dust, the cosmogenesis of expressed an attachment to the world consciousness of the sacred. elements in the heart of supernovas, the that is rarely matched. Their place in Trevor Parton (@RubidaTrevor) formation of Earth and the evolution of the scheme of things is expressed very life. We are carrying the whole history poignantly in song: We make a road for Photo: Hop Pea (Flinders Ranges of the past right here in the present. We the Spirit to pass over. (Passamaquaddy from the Newsletter of the Centre for are dazzled by its beauty and integrity. traditional song) The insight here is to Ecology and Spirituality After millenia of meditation on our world, give us a lead as to the role of the human science, culture, philosophy and religion in the progressive manifestation of Spirit, have brought this story ever so more what Teilhard de Chardin named as St Mary’s Matters 3 Myth of Separateness: and how it keeps us blind to the oneness of life n June 2015 a group of concerned ‘There is nothing to fear.’ Ipeople gathered in the foyer of Parliament House. Using the name ‘Love ‘Your body is simply an makes a Way’, they began to sing a song illusion.’ ‘Where were You?’ It was a peaceful protest in response to the treatment To this day it was of asylum seekers in the country. You probably the most happy, could not get a more obvious example of peaceful and calming how separateness is used to justify the ninety minutes I have treatment of these people. experienced in my life and I saw something Our government actively and deliberately in Trish fundamentally dehumanises them. They restrict change that day. As you information. They want us to see them all know, her happy as the enemy – as separate from us. disposition and attitude From separateness comes fear and from are quite remarkable and David with his wife Trish and daughter Sophia at Richmond, fear we manifest bigotry, racism, hatred remain ever since. Tasmania. One of David’s favourite places. and violence. We become blind to the oneness of life. It wasn’t about fighting in the music liturgy here has been a cancer. It was accepting it as it is, walking vital part in lifting me up when I felt The word ‘God’ has been tainted since with it and knowing that her real self overwhelmed. Many in this community mankind began to create the current main cannot die. have been incredibly supportive of us stream image of the divine. When I use over the past few years. But the ego is the word ‘God’ in this article, I do not From this encounter the real message of powerful and will always try and keep us mean a bearded man sitting on a cloud the resurrection became clear.