Seescapes Spiritual Growth Resources
Thank you for deciding to download World Alive with Loving God
World Alive with Loving God is a "30 Minute Retreat": a self-paced meditation that can be watched privately, or projected on screen for larger discussion groups.
Click here to start your download.
After this presentation downloads, save it to your computer. When you open it again, this Acrobat PDF file will open in full-screen mode, filling your computer screen. To stop the presentation, press the ESC key on your keyboard.
An Introduction to World Alive with Loving God
This photo-meditation merges text adaptations from Teilhard de Chardin's The Divine Milieu and Hymn of the Universe, with earth-scenes that help us see our everyday world as, "...ever more luminous and ever more charged with God." We share the lifelong vision of Teilhard de Chardin Ñ priest, scientist, and mystic. In his introduction to The Divine Milieu, priest-scientist Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) describes himself as a man trying to teach "...how to see God everywhere, to see him in all that is most hidden, most solid, and most ultimate in the world."
The French countryside of Auvergne had filled his youthful eyes and heart with the mystery of rocks, mountains, and endless expanses of wooded hills. He developed a deep reverence for the mysteries of nature, while nurturing a deep relationship with God. While studying for the priesthood in Southern England, he spent much of his time hunting fossils in a nearby wooded area. Wherever he looked this earth-loving God-lover found "...the divine radiating from the depths of matter aflame."
During his World War I service as a stretcher bearer in an infantry regiment, he encountered death daily, yet in a letter to his cousin he wrote, "...more than ever I believe that life is beautiful, in the grimmest circumstances - when you can see God, ever-present in them." His war-time journals and essays revealed what fired his soul, "I want to express my love of matter and life, and to reconcile it, if possible, with the unique adoration of the only absolute and definitive Godhead."
And now, almost a century later, Teilhard's lesson in deeper seeing is more needed than ever. In a world in which nothing seems sacred any more, he reminds us that "...the Creator and, more specifically, the Redeemer have steeped themselves in all things and penetrated all things to such a degree that the world is full of God."