All we have to do is let the very heart of the earth beat within us.
Celtic Christianity’s earliest expressions arose in ancient Gaul. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin became one its greatest proponents in the 20th century.
Teilhard defies any narrow description or identity: Jesuit priest, philosopher, scientist, theologian, teacher—for me, mystic embraces all of them. Even the Jesuits could not contain him. They did not allow his writings to be published during his lifetime. Posthumously, he became one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century, exerting a profound impact on the Second Vatican Council, within a mere ten years after his death.
His writings, according to his religious superiors, were overly optimistic and lacked attention to sin. Far from a naïve ivory-tower thinker, Teilhard developed his theology from broad life experiences. Inscribed in the French army, he served as a stretcher bearer at the battle of Dunkirk on Easter 1916. He saw first-hand the horrors of war. Later, when the Jesuits exiled him to China, he became part of the team that discovered the Peking man. Here’s a mystic whose feet were not only on the ground, but literally beneath the it!
Teilhard rejected his religious upbringing that taught the neutrality of matter, a humble servant of the spirit if not its enemy.
At the heart of matter is the heart of God. We make our way to heaven through earth … through communion with earth we experience communion with God.
For Teilhard, the sacred heart of the divine can be sought and found everywhere in the glory and pain of the world. The love of creation, love of heaven and love of earth, love of spirit and love of matter – all are inseparably intertwined.
Teilhard advocated freeing our religion from everything “Mediterranean,” meaning Western Christianity, wherein it began to serve worldly power.
Teilhard invites us to awaken to the sacred, to open it, and in knowing it deep within us to know that we are part of it, and in being part of it to know also that we are part of one another and of everything in the cosmos, the sacred interrelationship of all being.