What did the universe have in mind in spending 14 billion years of work to bring you to be here now?  What are you to the universe? How is the universe gifted by your presence?

Meister Eckhart, the 13th century mystic answers:

God’s being is my being
And God’s primordial being
Is my primordial being.
Wherever I am, there is God.

And again:

The seed of God is in us.
Now the seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree;
And a hazel seed grows into a hazel tree;
A seed of God grows into God.

Or perhaps this might help:

We ought to understand God equally in all things,
For God is equally in all things.
All creatures are interdependent.

These are not just the words of a 13th century mystic, but rather the expression of what we now know to be true.  But poets and mystics have known this for some time.

Earth is crammed with Heaven
And every common bush
On fire with God.
But only he who sees
Takes off his shoes.
The rest sit around
And pluck blackberries.

   
I am the dust in the sunlight, I am the ball of the sun. . .
        I am the mist of morning, the breath of evening. . .
    I am the spark in the stone, the gleam of gold in the metal. . .
    The rose and the nightingale, drunk with its fragrance.
        I am the chain of being, the circle of the spheres,
        The scale of creation,  the rise and the fall.
            I am what is and is not. . .
                I am the soul in all.
                                Rumi  (1207-1273)

    What I know of the Divine
    I learnt in the wood and fields.
        I have no other masters
    Other than the beeches and the oaks.   
                                St Bernard (1090-1153)

    All things by immortal power
        Near and far
           Hiddenly
          To each other linked are,
    That thou canst not stir a flower
           Without troubling a star.
                            Francis Thompson  (1859-1907)

Photo: S. Schadewal rscj

As you know the physicists of today are carefully explaining how all that is was originally contained in the matter of the Big Bang.  They talk about an emerging universe, one growing over time, unfolding over about 14 billion years.  No longer are they speaking about a universe created at the beginning of time, created by God out of nothing and all at once.  The word “created” stresses the transcendence of God as well as the continuing presence of God; it implies a God who creates and produces the creation from the outside as the efficient cause of everything.  This God rules the world through a plan called “Divine Providence” and creatures are secondary causes in carrying out God’s plan.  Here is implied a certain separation between God and the created world.
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?”

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