How do Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution echo Paul’s insights on love?
Today’s Post
Last week we looked more closely at Teilhard’s recognition of how Love is active in our personal lives as the manifestation of the energy of universal evolution. We saw that when we decide to act, we bridge the gap between what we believe we can do and what we hope will ensue by cooperating with the flow of energy that we now recognize as love.
This week we will take a final look at Love from Paul’s perspective, seeing a familiar passage in a new way. In doing so this illustrates how familiar things can take on a new light when we look at them differently. As T. S. Eliot sees it
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
Reinterpreting Paul
Now that we have looked at the ‘Theological Virtues’ from several secular perspectives, we can return to Paul, the first theologian, who recognized that Love was primary in the teachings of Jesus.
Cynthia Bourgeault is a faculty member of Richard Rohr’s ‘Center for Action and Contemplation’. In her book, “Love Is Stronger than Death: The Mystical Union of Two Souls” she beautifully uses a well-known passage from Paul to describe growth in “conscious love”:
“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7)
Bourgeault interprets Paul’s four assertions into secular terms which not only expand our treatment of the ‘Theological Virtues’, but weave Teilhard’s ‘articulations of the universe’ into the fabric of our relationships.
Love bears all things “This does not mean a dreary sort of putting-up-with or victimization. There are two meanings of the word bear, and they both apply. The first means “to hold up, to sustain”—like a bearing wall, which carries the weight of the house. . . . To bear [also] means “to give birth, to be fruitful.” So love is that which in any situation is the most life-giving and fruitful.”
- Here we can see a tangible reminder of the facet of Love that Teilhard refers to as ‘ontological’. Above the biological ‘fruitfulness’ of love there exists the power of love by which we ourselves are born and reborn.
Love believes all things “. . . . [This] does not mean to be gullible, to refuse to face up to the truth. Rather, it means that in every possible circumstance of life, there is . . . a way of perceiving that leads to cynicism and divisiveness, a closing off of possibility; and there is a way that leads to higher faith and love, to a higher and more fruitful outcome. To “believe all things” means always to orient yourselves toward the highest possible outcome in any situation and strive for its actualization.”
– Here we can see the interpolation of Faith being carried into the extrapolation of Hope
Love hopes all things ”. . . In the practice of conscious love you begin to discover . . . a hope that is related not to outcome but to a wellspring . . . a source of strength that wells up from deep within you independent of all outcomes. . . . It is a hope that can never be taken away from you because it is love itself working in you, conferring the strength to stay present to that “highest possible outcome” that can be believed and aspired to. “
– Here we can see that the recognition of the flow of energy that we now recognize as Love is not only a foundation for Faith and a basis for Hope, but the very ‘wellspring’ of the agency by which we act.
Finally, Love endures all things .” . . . Everything that is tough and brittle shatters; everything that is cynical rots. The only way to endure is to forgive, over and over, to give back that openness and possibility for new beginning which is the very essence of love itself. And in such a way love comes full circle and can fully “sustain and make fruitful,” and the cycle begins again, at a deeper place. And conscious love deepens and becomes more and more rooted. . . .”
– Here Bourgeault restates Teilhard’s vision of the recursive act in which centration and excentration can work to effect our continued ‘compexification’: the continuation of the agency of cosmic evolution through our individual lives.
The Next Post
This week we took a final look at Love, this time by returning to a familiar text of Paul but seeing it through Teilhard’s ‘lens’. Next week we will overview our travel from ‘the Sacraments’, through Teilhard’s ‘Articulation of the Noosphere’, in Values, Morals and Sacraments and finally in the attitudes captured in Paul’s so-called “Theological Virtues’.
Next week we will; conclude by summing up the process of ‘articulating the noosphere’ and living the ‘Theological Virtues’.