Lately I have been back to my theological nerdy ways. I have been reading theology just for fun here and there. I guess this makes sense. I love it AND I am preaching all this month with a small English speaking congregation in Berlin over zoom. My latest reading has taken me into the writngs of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who was a French theologian and Jesuit writing in the 50s or so. Teilhard is often quoted by Celtic theologians who I have studied under and so I wanted to delve back into his writings to reconnect myself to the Celtic center of spirituality.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin writes about the human experience of the divine through other humans and creation. While this seems pretty straightforward it also means that matter around us matters. We must take care of each other and the earth because the matter around us is infused with the divine. He wrote a whole work called the Divine Mileu meaning the entire environment around us is divine. Matter matters. We are not waiting for this world to pass because the divine is already present here and now.

This means that care matters, seeing other humans matter, seeing the divine in creation matters and our encounters matter. It also means that we don’t have to go searching for God outside of what is before us right now.

It is refreashing to read this these days when we are having to isolate and we don’t have access to the places that we might have sought the divine as easily. Places we went to, people we gathered with BUT it does mean that the divine is present in the encounters we do have, the places we are accessing and the environments around us. This also means that our own matter matters. We also hold the divine in our bodies. We are sacred and holy. How we treat and care for ourselves matter as well. And not as how we wish to be or think we should be but as we are.

This has helped me in exploring around me and my daily encounters, limited as they are these days. I can hold matter more closely and more carefully knowing that the divine has been infused in all that is. Teilhard also wrote about as we find ourselves more, in our centers, we are also closer to the divine, who God created us to be. My own spiritual journey as an inward journey allows me to see myself and who I was created to be more clearly. Those moments of centering and unveiling myself to myself matters as well.

What do you think about all of this?