The Omega Challenge

21 Comments

1. Dan Frachey on July 10, 2019 at 6:07 pm

   I experience God as the small fish that swims in the vast ocean which is God who is life, sustenance and home. I only see a little of the vastness but what I see allows me to feel unique and beloved as I behold the immensity and grandeur. It is at times frightening and yet sweetly familiar, wondrous and altogether affirming. My Franciscan heart urges me to respond to this milieu in moments of sacred particularity. This means orienting my senses to hear the bird song as I walk into work with a myriad of tasks awaiting me. This bids me to stop and gaze into another’s eyes who longs to be received and validated in a spiritual direction session. This orientation causes me to get on the carpet after returning home from work to let my chihuahuas lick my salty forehead. Yes, all of these little responses are occurring as the world spins in tumult and agony. I know that I have met God amidst these realities by paying attention to the birds, my directee and my dogs. Responding in the micro allows me then to manifest love in the macro.

   
   
   
2. Father Thomas Hughes,OSB on July 10, 2019 at 3:39 pm

   Divine radiance pulsates within every scintilla of existence found in every particle of space time.

   Sentient beings are fully involved at depth by their very nature’s. Seeming separation is illusory. All Creation is one!

   Divine Radiance pulsates in all from the tiniest to that which engulfs multiple heavens all about Universe itself. You

   Father Thomas Hughes, OSB

   
   
   
3. Diane Wood on July 10, 2019 at 10:37 am

   Ilia, thank you for your tremendous work! I met you a few years ago at Union Seminary when you gave the talk for the American Teilhard Association.

   Last fall, I completed my master’s degree with thesis on ” A Divine Milieu for a ‘Naufrage’: Teilhard’s Sacred Ontology as Spirituality for the 21st Century in Quebec and Other Secular Societies.”
   I am working on a book on the practice of divine reality and would love to contribute in some way to the Omega Center.

   I experience God as the life force of love and creative connection, transcendent and incarnate, completely ‘other’ and yet ‘person’ and within. I want to write about connections. I want to offer simple spiritual exercises that cultivate a deeper ‘seeing’ of and participation in our divine reality. The way I begin is with contemplation on the uncountable billions of events and unions, historic and ongoing, that make up the systems of systems that are my own physical, mental, and spiritual being. It is awe-inspiring, humbling, and gratitude-evoking! Now, do that with the cosmos…

   
   
   
4. Alan Sage on July 10, 2019 at 10:37 am

   I am constantly reminded of Teilhard’s Divine Milieu when thinking about God; God is precisely the presence within which we live and which is more than we can imagine and greater than we can hope for. This limitless presence can never be fully appreciated or encompassed by our human minds but offers a presence and future which is ultimately our fulfilment. Catholic theology is still encumbered with a static universe world view within which God is objectified as ‘out there or beyond our grasp’; it also ignores the symbolic meaning and reality of theological discourse and the biblical story of creation- incarnation- resurrection which Teilhard so brilliantly understood and expressed. In my own understanding God is the meaning of everything and that in which we are totally fulfilled beyond our imagination. We need to acknowledge this presence in ourselves and in our world and give ourselves completely to this presence in a complete act of faith and love. Faith is not about heaven or our future it is about now and this reminds us that we are not preparing for a future so much as fulfilling our role in Gods continuing presence. The created universe has ultimate meaning and value and is not just the backdrop to human salvation. Our commitment to humanity and the created universe and its future is what matters for it is our response to the loving creative divine initiative. Would that Catholic theology could share the Teilhardian vision – this would do more for evangelisation than all the initiatives taken so far.

   
   
   
   • Diane Wood on July 10, 2019 at 11:54 am

     Yes, a thousand times, yes! How can we retell the Christian story with its (original) vision of inclusion and unity, of love and hope at least as vast as our ever-increasing understanding of the universe?

     
     
     
5. vera dahm, phd on July 10, 2019 at 10:28 am

   I have needed to have a better experience of God…and finally at 77 I have settled on a great Being..yes permeating everything…but one greater than…say me or a leader..and from this I originated…and yes will return…and why I am here is to learn and to use free will and see what that means in the bigger picture…not clear yet..but what I can hang on to right now…otherwise all the suffering I have is just hell…and I have a lot as do many around me and on the planet…
   I have read many of your books and many of the others you quoted…but I needed something to hold onto and not just words and energy..and the expansion…
   vera

   
   
   
6. Mary Ann Blank on July 10, 2019 at 9:58 am

   I experience God in enjoying all things that surround me-nature, family and friends.
   To me, God is the loving force of creation. The essence of how we live and are. God is all and in all. God is being itself.
   I pray-intercessory and centering prayer.
   I read-need to read more. I breathe and know God is always with me.
   Blessings, Mary Ann

   
   
   
7. Peter Sloan on July 10, 2019 at 7:06 am

   Well, any deepening has to have some intentionality to it on my part. I have to make time for God so as not to be one who ‘takes Him for granted.’ I have to do something that prioritizes the ‘I-Thou’ relationship and creates room for good stuff to happen.I like to start the day with Scripture. It’s a modest thing but I fancy that it partly inoculates me from the coming day’s assault on faith & reason. Also, I try to remember to ask for wisdom and understanding. And, as silly as it may sound, to remember to b-r-e-a-t-h-e.

   
   
   
8. Donal O’Farrell on July 10, 2019 at 6:48 am

   Perhaps I experience God as awareness, an awareness of being experienced by God, of being held in loving awareness…

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   God is not an argument to be won, not a war to be fought,…
   If God is love we can only surrender.

   
   
   
9. George R Gerardi on July 10, 2019 at 6:41 am

   We look for God in the trees but He is in the forest from which it came.We look for God in our fellows yet he is the one who looks at our fellows: God is in the seeker who searches for God. We look for God as an object when God is the subject. To deny His existence is to deny our existence.

   
   
   
10. jenwatesJenifer Wates on July 10, 2019 at 6:08 am

    I see ‘God’ as the energy manifest in all creation, and the dynamic behind the drive of all things towards greater fullness of being – personalised in the flow of love experienced in prayer.