Reflection
Today’s mysticism begins when the totally transcendent image of God above or beneath or separate is replaced with a deepening sense of a universe immersed in and permeated by God’s loving presence active in all places¸ at all times, and in every human being and the rest of creation that ever existed. We are at a point of birthing a new image of God rather than trying to fit our old image of God into the new universe story.
Richard Rohr
Prayer
The whole earth is full of God’s glory.
Isaiah 6:3
Action
Reflect on your image of God and on the new universe story. How comfortable are you with an image of God in an evolving world? How can this help us make the world more compassionate and more just?
Suggested Reading
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
1 John 4:7-8
Humanity constructs images of God that prevent us from appreciating His real presence. Some offer a ‘do-it-yourself’ faith that reduces God to the limited spaces of our own desires and convictions.
Pope Francis
God is more intimate to me than I am to myself.
St. Augustine
If the universe is indeed a love story, then we can no longer tell this story as if divinity and humanity are opposed to each other. God belongs fundamentally to the universe, not to the human person alone. The very existence of the universe points to God. Creation exists because God exists. God is uncreated but co-inheres in created being. God is the unlimited depth of love of all that is, a love that overflows into new life. God is love, and love is the energy that makes everything precious and alive. … Love transforms because love unites.
Ilia Delio
To live God’s Universe Story is to participate in a large love. We need to be mystics, not moralists. We cannot wait for things to be perfect (friends, country, church, marriage) to fall in love with them, or we will never love anything. Once we accept that we are part of creation evolving, that we are evolving personally, then we are free to love the imperfect. We can love everyone and everything.
Richard Rohr
At the deepest level of consciousness divisions disappear. Our inner depths are as wide as the love we allow to flow through us.
Barbara Fiand
Love is an adventure and a conquest. It survives and develops, like the universe itself, only by perpetual discovery.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin