It’s back to auld clothes and porridge for me after the holidays and my recent retreat (see previous blog) which turned out to be all that I expected. The retreat was organised by the Dominican Sisters who run An Tairseach, an ecological centre in Wicklow that explores spirituality in the context of an evolving universe and an endangered earth. Because of travel difficulties I had opted to link in with this through zoom while living by myself in a self-catering flat in a nearby Carmelite monastery. This gave me plenty of time for prayer and reflection with the opportunity to walk by the river Clyde and savour the beauties of nature.
 
At the outset we were introduced to and invited to reflect on the amazing journey of this universe that we inhabit. For those in An Tairseach there was the opportunity to do this physically in the form of a cosmic walk set into the ground in the shape of a large spiral with hand painted stones representing some events, arbitrarily chosen but designed to give a sense of the universe’s unfolding process.  Unlike a labyrinth the cosmic spiral begins at the centre from a point that represents the Flaring Forth of life and takes the pilgrim through significant moments in evolution, giving a sense of the unfolding universe story to the last and outer stone which brings him or her to the present day. Luckily, I had been able to experience this cosmic walk in an earlier visit to An Tairseach but on this retreat had to be content with reflecting on each of the stages set out for us in the cosmic walk booklet.

 This didn’t feel like a second-hand experience because if gave me time to reflect on each stage and stay with any one for as long as I wanted. The universe story is amazing and wondrous. Even more wondrous is that it is also the story of each one of us and is part of us.  At that moment of the flaring forth of light and energy when the universe came into being 13.7 billion years ago it held the potential for everything that would come to be, including me and you, the reader. The hydrogen and helium set forth at that moment is still with us, the universe is still expanding, evolution continues its journey. From that moment of flaring forth stars, galaxies and planets have been formed, our own planet earth forming an atmosphere that sustained life. From the formation of simple cells, the earth has developed in many diverse and complex ways resulting at this moment in time in conscious human beings who have been described as the universe conscious of itself.

Two moments in this journey have stayed with me.  One happened 3.9 billion years ago - the process of photosynthesis when the earth learned to take nourishment from the sun, when plants and simple celled organisms learned to capture solar energy, convert it into chemical energy and store it for further use. This is a process that powers the planet’s living systems, this is what gives us the oxygen that sustains us, that set out the pattern for all future life forms where each receives and gives nourishment from and to the other. Giving and receiving is intrinsic to how we do live and should live in our daily interactions. What if it hadn’t happened? There would be no life as we know it, a refrain that could accompany each stage of evolution.  The second significant moment that has stayed with me is 1 billion years ago when life was drawn towards union and simple-celled organisms began to reproduce sexually, a process that meant they relinquished their immortality to facilitate the growth of multi-celled organisms. What if that hadn’t happened? Well sex but also death might not have become a condition for the creation of future life. For me this makes death meaningful. We cannot live forever even though some artificial intelligent experts talk as though it is one of the last barriers to be overcome. There would only then be stagnation. For life to continue and develop we must die, we must learn to let go when it is time for new and younger generation to contribute.  

Thomas Berry has said we, and he’s talking to Christians, need to know and live by the story of the universe. I also think we need a spiritual practice to help us realise that we are indeed children of the universe, part of this great evolutionary journey, interconnected with all life. One of Thich Nhat Hanh’s mindfulness gathas could  help with this. The one I like is, “I have arrived, I am home in the here, in the now”. Often, I begin by reminding myself that I am a child of the universe, become aware of my family and religious ancestors, pray they may be well, may be happy, may be free from suffering.  Then as I breathe into ‘I have arrived I am home’, I am aware of how I hold that evolutionary journey and those ancestors within me to arrive at this present moment, aware of where I am both physically and mentally. As I breathe into ‘in the here and the now’ I am aware that the here and now in the world in which I live is both a loving and painful one with wars, conflicts, violence, greed, pollution, climate change etc and I pray for all sentient beings, our wounded planet, and its warring nations that they may be well, may be happy and free from suffering. This is a practice that works for me. It links me into the universe story, connects me with the rest of life and hopefully awakens my compassion and desire for the well-being of future generations. Perhaps it would work for others too. 

 It has been rather a busy summer for me with the opportunity to visit friends and family and have a holiday in one of the most beautiful parts of Scotland.  This has been the first since the Covid restrictions came in two years ago.  Now I am about to go on retreat for six days. The retreat is being organised by the An Tairseach Ecology Centre in Wicklow which is run by a community of Dominican Sisters who practise sustainable living and are committed to educating people of the importance of care for creation and the link between ecology and spirituality, something which is growing in importance within religious and non-religious circles. Unfortunately travel arrangements became difficult so I’ve had to opt for the zoom version but the use of a flat in a local Carmelite monastery will give me the silence and separation from phone calls etc that I need. The retreat is entitled ‘Everything Ablaze, Encountering God’s Generative Love and Abiding Presence Within and Around Us’ and is advertised as reflecting on the work of people like Thomas Berry, Teilhard de Chardin and the poet of creation, Mary Oliver.
 
Central to it will be the universe story, recognising this great universe of ours, including our planet, as a self-organising system which has its own wisdom and laws from which we have evolved and whose future we now hold within our hands. In the light of climate change and the loss of biodiversity can we humans change our attitude from seeing the resources of our planet as infinite and there for our comfort to recognising our interdependence with all living things and that our future and way of life is intimately bound up with its future. It’s only with this change of perspective will we come to love the world we inhabit and act in ways that will sustain its life.
 
The idea of the universe as a single self-regulating system was developed by James Lovelock, a scientist and inventor who died on 26th July this year, on his 103rd birthday. It was his friend, the author William Golding who suggested using the metaphor Gaia for this hypothesis as a more imaginative way of describing it. In Greek mythology Gaia is the goddess of the earth and mother of all life and thinking of the universe in this more personal way helps us to see it as a living organism which regulates its environment to create the best conditions for the advancement of life.  It is to recognise that there is no distinct, separate identity for all are interrelated and depend on one another for life. So, we breathe in the oxygen expelled by trees who breathe in the carbon dioxide expelled by us. We need one another for survival. But so often human beings seem to forget this and the statistics for the destruction of rain forests that are the lungs of our planet are frightening. Surely Gaia must weep over the control some of us humans exert on the natural world and long for us to recover our rightful place in it so that we might work together for its well being and advancement. The welfare of our planet is in our hands.
 
The Gaia theory was ridiculed when James Lovelock first proposed it but it is now recognised by many as the foundation of much of climate science and movements such as The Work that Reconnects, established by Joanna Macey and the  Deep Transformation Network set up by Jeremy Lent as well as centres like An Tairseach. To link into these is to feel part of a movement which recognises the dire critical state of our planet but gives hope and a motivation for action. There are many people out there reflecting on our connectedness and interrelatedness with nature and trying to steer us away from greed, desire, and the belief that the resources of nature are inexhaustible and there for our benefit and comfort.
 
 I was privileged to be able to link into a conversation organised by the Deep Transformation Network between Ursula Goodenough and Andreas Weber. Both of them are lovers of life and nature, who see reality as oriented towards and yearning to give life. To be alive said Weber is to generate life and this desire comes from the inside of nature not from without. Individual subjects are driven by something within which craves for more existence, something the theologian Karl Rahner called ‘supernatural existentialism’ but related it to a christian understanding of salvation. Life itself is a miracle and, I suspect for Weber, needs no Creator who planned and set the whole process in motion – something I have some sympathy for.  This is not to reject a religious perspective, but it is to reinterpret it in the light of what we now know of the universe story – something that will be well reflected on during this week’s retreat. It is also to recognise that we humans must listen to that drive towards life and respond accordingly for, says Weber, “humans will be run over in the search for life” but what will bring about our salvation is love which he describes as “the impulse to establish connections, to intermingle, to weave our existence poetically together with that of other beings. The fact that we disregard this principle lies at the core of a global crisis of meaning that plays out in the avalanche of species loss and in our belief that the world is a dead mechanism controlled through economic efficiency”.
 
What better foundation for a retreat could there be than this.