Today’s Post
Last week we continued our look at the ‘Cosmic Spark’, that thread of becoming which is at the heart of the universal evolution towards increased complexity as it rises through the human person. Recognizing that referring to this aspect of ‘cosmic becoming’ as ‘divine’ does not square with the secular aspect of God that we have focused on (thanks, responders), I am now referring to it as the ‘Cosmic Spark’.
This week we shift our focus from the need for discovery of and cooperation with this agent of evolution in the human, to its ‘effects’. While acknowledgement of it is at the heart of Thomas Jefferson’s assertion of the ‘equality of all men’ and thus necessary to our successful mode of societal government, what happens in our lives as we become more aware of it and adept at cooperating with it?
Quantifying a ‘Good Life’
Our history is rife with prescriptions and proscriptions for human behavior. All societies contain lists of such acceptable behavior, and the criteria for acceptability is some combination of behavioral norms that most frees the individual to produce for the society without undermining the production itself. The assumption in all cases is that ‘what’s good for society is good for the individual’, and in some cases, ‘what’s good for the individual is what’s good for society’.
But how can we objectively define ‘what’s good for the individual’ other than that which is good for the society? We can easily make such generalizations such as ‘freedom is good’ and ‘we must all get along’, but how much freedom, and in what areas? Is it possible to objectively quantify a ‘good’ life?
As we have seen previously, the Apostle Paul is very adept at summarizing the teachings of Jesus as found in the three ‘synoptic’ gospels available to him. We have seen how Paul’s organization of Jesus’ concepts into ‘virtues’, for example, can be seen to fall into three categories of ‘stances’ or attitudes we can take for a ‘fuller’ life.
As Jesus says, “I come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10). More germane to this week’s subject, Paul does the same for abundance as he did for virtues, summarizing what he sees as Jesus’ insights into ‘what is good’ for the human person.
Paul listed those attributes of life that he saw as deriving from a life informed by the Theological Virtues, and his list is a good start to describing ‘abundancy’ as an underling principle of ‘goodness of life’. These attributes are summarized in his ‘fruit of the spirit’, which in our secular reinterpretation can be seen as attributes which the human person takes on as he becomes aware of the Cosmic Spark and becomes adept at cooperating with it.
The ‘Fruit’ of the Cosmic Spark
The ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ is Paul’s term that sums up nine attributes of a person or community living ‘in accord with the Holy Spirit’. Chapter 5 of Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians lists them: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Among the many attempts to objectively quantify the attributes of a ‘full’ or complete human life, these seem high on the list.
Love – We have addressed the attribute of love several times in this blog, noting the significant difference between the traditional understanding of it as the emotion by which we are attracted to each other and Teilhard’s insight that it is a manifestation of the universal evolutive energy by which things become more complex, and hence more united over time in such a way as they become more complete. By participating in love we become more complete, more whole.
Peace – It is hard to imagine something more conducive to peacefulness than that the recognition that our efforts to grow more complete are underwritten by a universal energy which rises unbidden and unearned within us. God, as Blondel understood ‘Him’, is on our side. Life, as it is offered to us as a gift, is guaranteed to be open to our strivings, welcoming to our labors. As the Ground of Being is uncovered as our own personal ground of existence, it is understood more as father than as fate.
Patience – Patience becomes more than long-suffering teeth gritting endurance necessary for ‘salvation’, but the natural acceptance of what cannot be changed in light of Teilhard’s “..current to the open sea” on which we are carried when we ‘…set our sails to the winds of life.”
Recognition of the Cosmic Spark within us, the ‘gifted’ nature of it, and confidence in where it is taking us, can instill a patience with the vagaries of life that was would have been previously considered to be naive.
Kindness – As an essential building block of both society and personal relationships, kindness is prescribed by nearly every religion as the ‘Golden Rule’. Beyond this prescription is the natural emergence of kindness as a recognition that not only are we underpinned by the Cosmic Spark, but others are as well. Treating others as we would be treated ourselves requires us to be aware of how our own Cosmic Spark is the essence of being by which we all reflect Teilhard’s ‘axis of evolution’.
Goodness – Goodness, of course, is that tricky concept which underlays all the ‘fruits’ of Paul. In Paul, as echoed by Teilhard, that which is ‘good’ is simply that which moves us ahead, both as individuals and members of our societies. If we are to have ‘abundance’ of life, whatever contributes to such abundance is ‘good’.
Faithfulness – As we saw in our look at the Theological Virtues, faith is much more than intellectual and emotional adherence to doctrines or dogmas as criteria for entry into ‘the next life’. Faith has an ontological character by which we understand ourselves to be caught up in a ‘process’ which lifts us from the past and prepares us for a future that while it might be unknown is nevertheless fully manageable.
Gentleness – As a mirror to ‘goodness’, ‘gentleness’, once we have become aware of the Cosmic Spark not only in ourselves but in all others, becomes the only authentic way of relating to others.
Self-Control – Self-control acknowledges that while we might be caught up in a process by which we become what it is possible to become, this process is dependent upon our ability and willingness to choose. Being carried by Teilhard’s ‘current’ (‘Patience’, above) still requires us to develop the skills of ‘sail setting’ and ‘wind reading’. The instinctual stimuli of the reptilian and limbic brains do not dissipate as we grow, but the skill of our neocortex brains to modulate them must be judiciously developed.
The Next Post
This week we looked a little deeper into how finding and cooperating with the ‘Cosmic Spark’ adds to the abundance of our lives. .
Next week we will move on looking deeper into how denying the cosmic spark can not only leave us unable to taste Paul’s ‘fruits’, but can undermine our continued evolution.