Throughout my life, by means of my life,
the world has little by little caught fire in my sight until,
aflame all around me,
it has become almost luminous from within.
Such has been my experience in contact with the Earth.
The diaphany of the Divine at the heart of the universe on fire.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu

Two weeks ago, the climate crisis within Canada, as well as across the planet, urged me to seek the deep roots of our present peril, to share what wisdom I could find to guide us in this new reality. I turned to the writings of ecotheologian Thomas Berry who saw clearly the heartbreaking losses of biodiversity in planetary life and yet called us to hope. Berry, who died in 2009, believed that “we are supported by the ultimate powers of the universe as they make themselves present to us…. Also the planet Earth and the life communities of the earth are speaking to us through the deepest elements of our nature.” (Thomas
Berry The Dream of the Earth (Sierra Club, 1988)

Last week, I sought out light-bearers of our time whose discoveries and patient explorations, related to water, forests and plants, are awakening hope, helping us to understand what “the life communities of the earth” are teaching us.

Yet by the end of last week, with planetary temperatures still soaring, with fires still burning out of control in BC, with Nova Scotia awash in a torrential rainfall that destroyed bridges and inundated roads, with the tragedy of human lives lost in BC’s fires and Nova Scotia’s floods, holding hope was becoming difficult.

By Saturday morning, I was dancing very near despair… Though I could not grasp how it could be so, I wanted to trust Thomas Berry’s belief that “we are supported by the ultimate powers of the universe.”

That support arrived on Saturday afternoon in the form of a preview from The Shift Network for a Zoom course: “Science, Spirituality and the Noosphere.” It will be co-taught by Theologian Matthew Fox, (author of The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance and Scientist Brian Swimme (co-author with Thomas Berry of The Universe Story and with Mary Evelyn Tucker, Journey of the Universe).

The Noosphere is the concept of Thomas Berry’s much-admired forbearer, Priest and Paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

In 1923, Teilhard formulated this concept as a way of describing a sphere of human thought spread across the earth. In his lifetime, Teilhard lamented the division, the distrust, the conflict that existed between scientists and theologians. He understood the great need we had for both. His words are a cry of the heart: “Who will at last give evolution its own God?”

Even as I write this, I am in awe at the synchronicity of these happenings: in the 100th anniversary year of Teilhard’s prophetic intuition, a scientist and a theologian are co-teaching a ZOOM course that illumines Teilhard’s thought…

I offer you now a sampling from my notes, written as I listened to
Matthew Fox and Brian Swimme in conversation, introducing themes
from their upcoming course on the Shift Network, Tuesdays, August 8th to September 19th: “Science, Spirituality and the Noosphere.”
May their insights lift your heart and spirit as they lift mine.

Matthew: The 12th Century Renaissance worked because, unlike that of the 16th Century, it came from the grassroots including women and youth; it was animated by a rediscovery of science. The Renaissance we need now will be a rebirth based on spirituality, breaking out of dying institutions, discovering a fair, better balanced life for our time.

Brian: What’s dying is our seeing the universe as a machine; it is a birthing universe, alive, with a form of cosmic intelligence that manifests in the structure of the universe. The great discovery, thanks to the Hubble Telescope, is that “the Universe is expanding in all directions!” Stephen Hawking discovered that the rate of expansion from the moment it burst forth was exactly what it had to be for life to emerge. “From the beginning, the Universe knew where it was going.”

Matthew: The scientific discovery of an intelligent universe was intuited by the mystics. Julian of Norwich affirms that “we’ve been loved from before the beginning”.
We have to combat the doctrine of “Original sin”. The expansion of the Universe is an invitation to humans to grow, to expand in love. This call to expand as humanity changes our behaviour in the context of cosmology.

How amazing that we’ve learned to take photos of the Universe with the Hubble and Webb telescopes. “This is how Renaissance happens.”

Daily there are new discoveries about our origins and our history. We see the failure of our institutions: religious, educational, economic, political…
“We’ve been using our creativity to destroy one another rather than to love one another.”

Brian: One hundred years ago Teilhard described “the Noosphere”. The planetary mind. Humanity is giving birth to a form of mind we still don’t fully understand.
It’s something more wonderful than has ever appeared in history, a “super organism” spread over the surface of the earth, the emergence of “a thinking earth”, determining the shaping of the planet.

Matthew: There’s a spiritual nature to the Noosphere. Teilhard was a scientist and a mystic. It’s what binds us to the ALL that envelops us. Humanity is discovering what’s beyond us through nature, the planet, art and poetry.
The earth is part of our connection to the whole. Now that we can see the earth from outside the earth, we are invited to wake up!

Moving beyond despair and pessimism, we have the passion to remake the structures. “Things are exploding in human consciousness.”
Though there may be life on other planets, they are very far away! We are HERE with intelligence, curiosity, creativity and with the potential for creating Peace as well as War. We can create JOY. Thomas Berry saw that the whole purpose of the Universe was CELEBRATION!

Brian: At the Quantum level, elementary particles are constantly disappearing and rising, moving into and out of existence. This is also true of larger life though the change is too gradual for us to see it. Mountain ranges are dancing incessantly, transported into living things, transforming. Rocks become gazelles and oak trees. We’re part of this movement and AWARE how things can be guided to a different future. It’s who we are. We are the planet aware of itself and can focus our creativity into newness.

Matthew: The great wake-up call (floods, hurricanes, fires) is happening at the same time as we are understanding the greater reality. Human morality has to reflect the reality of the physical universe, the laws that make it work: Interdependence. We need to create systems of compassion, with awareness of the Sacred. Then there is joy and the Sacred awakens Celebration!