Darkness deepens in these early December days, throughout our planet, our Mother Earth. In the Northern Hemisphere we await the return of light at the Winter Solstice. Longing for light, for joy, for love is at the heart of the music and stories we hear as we await the Feast of Christmas.

Yet, the love and light, the joy we hunger for, will not pierce this present darkness until we come to a deeper understanding of the mystery of the Presence of Love in the Universe, the Presence of Love within all of life, within the lives of each of us.

What is needed is a new story, already being pieced together by today’s physicists and cosmologists, now recognized as among the mystics of our time.

This story begins in the absence of light, in the absence of time, in the absence of everything. Nothing is suddenly illumined by something. Time and story begin in that instant, nearly fourteen billion years ago…

Some scientists call that first something, the “big bang”, an explosion that sent matter hurtling out across space in an ecstasy of movement that continues to this day, still to be seen in the deep heart of the Universe in photos taken by the James Webb Telescope. The cosmologist Brian Swimme calls it a “flaring forth”, a flame that penetrates the darkness.

In the beginning was FIRE. Within that fire was forged the essence of everything that would be birthed in our Universe. Was the Universe alive in that first moment? Perhaps not, yet scientists see that from that beginning the focus was to engender life…

The fire burned for a million years, the elements released by it spreading outwards in an expansion of stars and galaxies, black holes and planets, all engaged in a process we know intimately in our own lives, a dance of life/death/ life.

The flaring forth sent matter hurtling outward in a movement as precisely timed as a choreographed ballet. Had it been slower, even by the smallest measure, matter would have collapsed back into nothing. Had it been faster, the movement would have utterly destroyed it. Exquisite timing allowed it to expand and expand over the billions of years even until today.

Our own galaxy was birthed in this way, forming our sun, with its encircling planets in a spiral dance. Four billion years ago, our earth, with her enchanted moon encircling her, emerged, carrying within her body the seeds of every facet of life that would evolve over billions of years. Every aspect of life ever known on Earth was born of a star, from porpoises to pearls, from elephants to mosquitoes, from cows to sheep and goats, from apple and pear trees to us humans who eat their fruit, from dinosaurs to the tiny chambered nautilus…

What is more, each of these aspects of life has intelligence that guides it to seek out what it needs for its existence. You and I have seen how a wild flower knows to turn her face towards the sun, to draw in water from rain, nutrients from the soil that holds her secure. She knows how to allure the honeybees that will assist her by making her seeds fertile, sending them forth to produce her offspring who will live on even if her own life is cut short by a drought or a freeze…

The Earth herself is a sentient being, capable of the kind of intelligence that has kept her alive through the age of the predatory dinosaurs, through ice ages, through the huge fluctuations in the sun’s heat, learning to adjust to all of these changes. She has survived collisions with meteors from space, one of which, as scientists now say, caused such great changes that the dinosaurs were destroyed. The crater left by that meteor sixty-six million years ago is buried underneath the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

Now Earth faces the challenges created by us humans who in our greed for her fossil fuels are willing to blow the tops off mountains, poison the waters, destroy the rain forests, the lungs of our Mother Earth, and dig deep into her body to unearth minerals, precious metals and jewels. Climate change is predominantly due to human activity. The Earth may need to protect herself from these depredations by raising her temperature in order to survive. An average temperature in the 40’s Celsius may be what she needs, even though human life cannot survive that heat.

What we are learning from the advances of science about our planet was, in essence, known and honoured by our early ancestors. Even today there are indigenous cultures who still hold the ancient beliefs, who still cry out against our matricide. For this Earth is Mother to us. All that is within us, body, mind and spirit, has come from her womb. The fruits and vegetables that nurture us as well as the animals who feed from her before giving their bodies to become our food, derive from our Mother Earth. Her oceans nourish the fish and sea creatures who in turn nourish us. Our planet continues to give us all she has even as we attempt in our ignorance to destroy her.

There is something more in this story, a gift from the labours and love, the brilliant mind and insight of the 20^th century Jesuit paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard understood that every aspect of life is afire with Love, penetrated with the Divine.

Today we are coming to know a Feminine Presence of Divine Love, honoured by Ancient Cultures, rising among us. We hear her calling to us: “Look for Me in the sea, in the lake, in the night sky when its stars paint patterns of silver on blackness. Seek me in the good earth, in all that grows from her soil and in all that is nourished by her: trees, flowers, plants, insects, birds, the small creatures that dwell in the woods. Seek me in the fire that destroys what no longer thrives. Know that these gifts of air, water, earth and fire also dwell in you. Above all, seek me in your own heart.”

This is our joy, our hope, our experience of Love, rooted in the birth of our Universe:

To fall asleep under a sky whose stars pierce us with mystery

To waken in a state of inexplicable longing,

To fall in love, again and again, with the beauty of a lake, a sunset, a willow, a lark

To seek all our lives long for meaning, for belonging, for home…

This is the human experience, its blessing, its wounding.

Poets intuited an interconnection, mystics experienced a unity.

Now, today,

We live into the wonder of seeing,

Of knowing with the precision of science,

Our place in the universe.

The Story of the Universe

Is a story about everything.

It tells us why and how we are here,

Why loss and longing and death intermingle

With joy and love and life,

Leading always to deeper life.

Because of this story, no one can ever again dare to say

That we are less than sacred,

That we are less than whole,

That we do not belong.

And in knowing our lives to be inextricably woven into

As well as out of the very stuff of which the Universe is made,

In knowing ourselves to be the Universe, conscious of itself,

We glimpse the true nature of the Beloved

For whom we yearn without ceasing,

Even as we live within Her.

*(adapted from Singing the Dawn, Anne Kathleen McLaughlin, Borealis Press, Ottawa, Canada, 2022 (http://borealispress.com)

Cosmological References: Brian Thomas Swimme: The Universe is a Green Dragon, 2001, and The Journey of the Universe, 2011, with Mary Evelyn Tucker