Love can help us feel

I was recently in an NHS hospital ward for a week. I was able to witness the kindness and courage of the nurses and doctors and I felt greatly valued, as did all the other patients in the ward. 

There also quickly emerged a feeling of comradeship between the patients.

All this personal response resonated with the thoughts expressed in a book I was reading. The book, Catholic Christianity in Evolution, is written by Alan Sage and describes the impact on spiritual thinking of the ideas of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who had been greatly influenced by the comradeship he experienced in the trenches during the First World War.

As early as 1919, Teilhard had written his ideas to stimulate change in a church which was becoming increasingly irrelevant to life in modern times.

The impact of evolution was not embraced by the Church and Teilhard discussed how to find God and Christ in an evolving universe. Teilhard’s ideas were not accepted by the Church.

One of the outstanding features of his approach is that we humans are co-creators with God, so that every act can have great significance both for each of us and or humanity.

Alan Sage shows that from Teilhard’s views a deeper concept of God is required relevant to all faiths and none. He needs to be vast and mysterious but felt to be present in all things however small and open to human effort.

With these thoughts from the “book at bedtime” swirling around in my head, I was struck again by the love shown by the nurses around me and realised that it was not only a deeper concept of God that was required but our love for Him and for people. We need a deeper concept of the value of individual also. We need to understand and embrace Jesus as never before, because He has given us this knowledge.

Cartoon: Bill McArthur

If we can find God in each person, then we can find Him in the heavens. We must abandon ourselves in love to Him and others. We have been shown by Jesus the passion with which this must be done. He showed us an infinite love for each individual and a loving faith in God as Father. Like Jesus, we fall in love with God and with people also.

Together with a fresh view of an evolving world, this love can help us feel and see God anew with both knowledge and passion, which will be required to work with Him to combat disease, climate change and environmental destruction and help our Earth join the evolving stars.

John Kusel, Cumbernauld