Dear Friends,
We are entering a season of Thanksgiving and grace in a world besieged by war and violence. There are wars within and wars without. Anxiety and fear are palpable, as the destabilized human community struggles to remain upright. Systems no longer work for the good of the whole and are conflicted within, rendering them ineffective. Teilhard de Chardin said that a breakdown of systems and the pain of war are signs of an unfinished universe waking up and struggling towards its fulfillment. We humans are the thinking portion of the universe; hence the future depends on how we struggle to understand ourselves in this rapidly changing world so that we may think towards the future.
The human species is at the end of one of its natural cycles of evolution. While our species may be coming to an end, a new type of person is on the horizon. Science, technology, and a renewal of spiritual energy are all part of the new human. We know a lot about the diminishing human, but we know very little about the emerging new person.
The Center for Christogenesis is committed to a deepened understanding of divine love in evolution and to finding new ways of understanding the new human person as a vital center of love, a co-creator of a world in formation. In his inaugural address for the World Congress of Faiths (March 8, 1947), Teilhard said: “We are looking for something that will draw us together, below or above the level of that which divides. . Not through external pressure but only from an inward impulse can the unity of Mankind endure and grow.” The power to do new things must come from within.
Our attention today is absorbed in multiple fields of information which pull us away from our inner selves; as a result, we are unraveling quickly. Individuation, as Carl Jung taught, is the process of inner reconciliation, without which the world cannot find peace. When the individual remains divided within and does not become conscious of one’s inner opposite, the world inevitably acts out the conflict and is torn into opposing halves. Thomas Merton wrote, “if I find myself, I will find God, and if I find God, I will find myself. If God is love, then to find myself is to find my center of love out of which peace is born.”
The Center for Christogenesis is committed to understanding a new God for a new world; the new person who will shape the new world; and new ways of convergent, interpersonal life ahead.
Your financial support can help realize the new vital role of religious energy in the 21st century. If we can imagine a new wholeness emerging through science and religion and developing renewed institutional systems for human flourishing, then can we realize a new type of planetary community. The only way to predict the future is to create it, and the power to do so will come from those who are unbounded in love.
Thank you for your support!
Blessings and peace,
Sr. Ilia Delio
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