Harnessing the Energy of Love

Ah, you know it yourself, Lord, through having borne the anguish of it as a man: on certain days the world seems a terrifying thing: huge, blind, and brutal. It buffets us about, drags us along, and kills us with complete indifference. Heroically, it may truly be said, man has contrived to create a more or less habitable zone of light and warmth in the midst of the cold, dark waters—a zone where people have eyes to see, hands to help, and hearts to love. But how precarious that habitation is! At any moment the vast and horrible thing may break in through the cracks—the thing we try hard to forget is always there, separated from us by a flimsy partition: fire, pestilence, storms, earthquakes. Or the unleashing of dark moral forces—these callously sweep away in one moment what we have laboriously built up and beautified with all our intelligence and all our love. 

 ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu, p. 112

Sermon Resources: 

• Cynthia Bourgeault on "Teilhard for Troubled Times": Part 1; Part 2; Part 3
• Interview of Teilhard's Biographer Ursula King: On Being episode
• Reflective questions on the Parable of the Prodigal Son: Link to a reflection of Henri Nouwen's writings

Service Art: 

Image 1: Harmenszoon van Rijn Rembrandt (Creative Commons)

Image 2: On Being (creative commons) Pierre Tielhard de Chardin