The Heart of Matter: We Are Not Meant To Control Nature
Tuesday, August 16th
“…the fact is, earth is the primary reality and we are derivative of earthly life. God was creating long before we arrived on the scene. We are not meant to control nature, but instead to be its mind and heart as it seeks its ultimate fulfillment. If we seek to manipulate nature, it will rise up against us.”
Ilia Delio, Hours of the Universe
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“Lo cierto es que la Tierra es la realidad primaria y que nosotros somos una derivación de la vida terrestre. Dios estaba creando mucho antes de que nosotros entráramos en escena. No estamos destinados a controlar la naturaleza, sino a ser su mente y su corazón mientras busca su plenitud final. Si pretendemos manipular a la naturaleza, esta se levantará contra nosotros.”
Ilia Delio, Hours of the Universe
What is being moved? What is being asked?
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“While panentheism is a helpful concept, the language of pantheism and panentheism is based on concepts of ‘being’ and ‘nature’ that can lead to misguided images of distinct beings in…
How true! We are seeing the results of abuse now!
However, respecting and nurturing nature, it will nurture us with abundance. How amazing is its complexity and beauty!
Check out the website Human Energy .
A metaphor for controlling Nature is perhaps, keeping birds in cages and animals in zoos or using them for circus performances. We need only to look at these beautiful creatures in these situations to know that something is terribly wrong with this practice. Humans can learn from animals about adaptation, love and care, community. Beyond the metaphor is the reinforcing irony of this latter situation.
Of course we are not meant to control nature; only God controls nature. Now, millennia after the creation of humanity, humans serve and manage the parts of nature we can comprehend. We have developed agriculture, fishing, medicine and other ways of putting nature to use, healing it, preserving it. Jesus made healing and even restoring people to life signs of his management of nature. Am I missing a key idea about the statement about humans controlling nature? Being nature’s “mind and heart as it seeks its ultimate fulfillment” sounds very contemplative, but does it imply not using human hands and muscles to be stewards of the creation for which many believe humans must care?
“The supreme good is like water, which benefits all of creation without trying to compete with it.” Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu in “Tao Te Ching,” over 2,000 years ago.
Loving Wisdom of Divine Mother Nature…
All contemplative (mystical) teachings have their origins in unitive consciousness that join in a unified field of silent Oneness. But ordinary human perception and thought tend to divide the field, splitting the whole into multiple parts like on a gridiron, the source of all earthly divisions and conflicts. Complicating things, each culture, language, religion, science, or philosophy has its own graven image (icon) and/or inflection of that indivisible One. Differing languages, icons and metaphors mirror the noumenal world, but further add to confusing global “babblings” that obscure a unifying vision of God, specifically, the identity of the universal substance/matrix of his/her many created forms. So, humanity didn’t fall from God’s once enchanted garden. Rather, a universal understanding of Gods’ oneness with the whole created order “fell” in mankind, with dire consequences following. That wouldn’t be problematic if the majority meditated in apophatic silence in understanding same, but they don’t, won’t, or can’t. Hence, the earth and all life in it are jeopardized on many fronts, with the hourglass winding down. So, reversing Genesis 3 to11’s many “fall of God” disorders besetting humanity must first begin, if not in consciousness, then conceptually. That is, by reverse spiritual engineering, looking through the lens of each splintered discipline and religious tradition (all at once) and identifying what must have been their original pre-fall-of God, pre-Babel primordial consciousness and unified tradition. And more importantly, identifying what simple universal substance (contextually) fueled it that was restored at Pentecost, sorely needing rekindling today. Anyone game? Even so, seems most would be curious, becoming conceptually informed while, sans grace, remaining spiritually unawake and obtuse. Being largely at cross-purposes with itself, humanity is at cross-purposes with God and nature. “If they will not hear Moses and The Prophets, they will not believe . . . even though a man would rise from the dead” (Lk.16:31). Short of that, seems something apocalyptic must, and likely will occur to stem the tide.
Don’t see myself as ‘mind and heart of nature’. Rather conscious of myself striving to be ‘in the image and likeness of godself’ , a ‘measurer’ of an divine reality, not ‘the measure’ of divine being.
We are not to control nature. Totally agree, first, in that we are only the smallest of protists inside a cell, inside an organ, inside a tissue, inside an organ, inside an organ system, inside an organism , inside a biosystem, inside a planet, inside a solar system, inside a galaxy, inside a universe, and so much more . Yet, we are called to experience the wonder and awe of the unfolding. So in my local space and time: Are the SEFL compact community entering data in the CEJST?
Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST)
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How is this energy getting embedded? Are we not making a way for a new periodic table of becoming more adult in sharing on this screening tool, with each other?
We have lost our connection with our primary reality, that we are a part of nature. In reality we are made up of billions of cells that control our very existence, our consciousness, and the quality of our lives. We only become aware of this as we become older and we develop illnesses. Some unfortunate people find out early in life that life is defined by the cells of their bodies. My bother and sister both had spinal muscular atrophy, a form of muscular dystrophy, and never walked. They were wheelchair bound but still found the courage and strength to live meaningful lives. I wonder what our world would look like today if people became aware of the gift that life is, the gift that our consciousness makes us aware of. That the meaning of life does not center on attaining goals but on celebrating our existence as beings of billions of cells formed by God in evolution, and the relationships that this existence allows us to share with each other and all living / nonliving beings.