As Thomas Berry, the theologian says:  “God is not constantly running the show as though the universe were made up of puppets. It is not a puppet show; it is a reality, functioning from within its own spontaneity.”

Now, when we speak of an emerging universe we are describing a process in which the whole universe is emerging in a time-development sequence from within.  This kind of language stresses the immanence of God;  it implies a God who acts from the inside out with internal causality. There is an immediate internal presence of the power, energy, and love of God as the source of all things.

In Matt Fox’s words: “ At these times we are asking truths about who we are and what our purpose is for being here. We are no longer taking our existence for granted – nor are we taking our ancestors for granted.  These ancestors, we are learning, include the original fireball, the hydrogen and helium atoms that it gave birth to, the galaxies that birthed the supernovas that birthed the stars that birthed the earth that birthed the waters and the continents and the plants and the animals and the ozone and the sun and the moon and the seeds and the trees and the flowers – all of which were necessary for our presence to occur.” (Creativity p.22)

Another thing we need to recognize if we are to know ourselves, is that we are intimately connected with all that it.  That I am already part of a vast community.  That statement:  no man is an island  - is more true than the writer realized, than anyone realized.  We are beginning to realize now as the physicists make clear to us, that all, ALL, things are connected.

“The fundamental insight of twentieth-century physics has yet to penetrate the social world: relationships are more important than things.  At all levels of life, “writes Capra, “from the metabolic networks inside cells to the food webs of ecosystems and the networks of communications in human societies, the components of living systems are inter-linked in network fashion.”

We are one with all that is! The very foundation of our being we owe to the universe. Our birth is from all that went before us!

As Brian Swimme, the physicist, says it: “ The rocks are Mozart!  The rocks are Picasso!  The rocks are your ancestors!” And, once in class, he held up an orange and said, “Do you know that when you eat an orange you are eating the universe?”

We are connected.  The physicists are beginning to explain how true this is.