Sunday, May 9, 2010

North American Province of the SOSc Inaugural Meeting


Photo: Barbara Smith-Moran, SOSc
It is going to take me forever to catch up on my blog reading and I'm sure people have thought I've dropped off the face of the earth.  Last week was the first meeting of the North American Province of the Society of Ordained Scientists (SOSc).  We had a lovely retreat near Boston and our meditations were based on the ideas of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, led by James Skehan, S.J., a geologist and Teilhard scholar.  It was wonderful installing five new members and five new associates, getting to know people better, and praying together .

I intend to get out my yellowed copy of the Divine Milieu and tackle it again.  I also want to get started on "Praying with Teilhard de Chardin" by Jim Skehan.  He also introduced me to "The Mass on the World" which the quote below comes from.  The Mass on the World was written while he was working in China and unable to celebrate the Eucharist on a regular basis.

"Glorious Christ,
you whose divine influence is active at the very heart of matter,
and at the dazzling centre where the innumerable fibres of the multiple meet:
you whose power is as implacable as the world and as warm as life,
you whose forehead is of the whiteness of snow,
whose eyes are of fire,
and whose feet are brighter than molten gold;
you whose hands imprison the stars;
you are the first and the last, the living and the dead and the risen again;
it is to you to whom our being cries out a desire as vast as the universe:
In truth you are our Lord and our God! Amen.” (The Mass on the World, 1923,
XIII, 131-132)

2 comments:

June Butler said...

I see you, Amelia. Nice picture.

Years ago, I read Teilhard de Chardin, and I can't say that I understood everything I read, and I can't remember the title or much of what I read, but what I did understand made a great deal of sense at the time. I remember the noosphere and an evolving circular(?) movement towards God, but my memory may not serve me well.

motheramelia said...

I thin that's from the Divine Milieu. I was really taken by Jim Skehan's meditation bits from the Mass on the world. It starts "Since once again, Lord — though this time not in the forests of the Aisne but in the steppes of Asia — I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself; I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labours and sufferings of the world.> Got to get me a copy.