Day Lily

I have read three books by Sister Ilio Delio, a Franciscan theologian, in an attempt to understand what the new science and hence the new cosmologies have to say about the Cosmic Risen Christ. With the help of Richard Rohr’s occasional excursions into the Cosmic Christ and Matt Fox’s The Christ Path Seminar Series, I am beginning to get glimpses of the Cosmic Christ that I can understand.

The Cosmic Christ is the Risen Jesus, the Christ, present in all of creation (matter and energy). God created out of infinite Love and the stardust cascading throughout the cosmos and our very being since the first Big Bang is God Love. The incarnation of Jesus is the second Big Bang, God Love made incarnate in matter-energy. The Cosmic Christ is both in creation as it flares forth and is ahead of creation as the Omega Point calling us and all of creation to be all that we can be—spiritualized matter ultimately divinized in God.

I hope I am making sense. Practically speaking, the archetype of the Cosmic Christ is an icon of God Love ever present in the cosmos. Icons make real what they represent. The archetype gives new and deeper meaning to the web of life of which we are all a part. The Cosmic Christ is about care for creation because it is care for the Cosmic Christ within. There is a blazing spark of the divine in every part and parcel of creation—human and non-human. The archetype provides a firm theological and cosmological basis for trying to reclaim Mother Earth from the devastation we have wrought on her.

I know this sounds like pious poppycock to some; however, it became very real when Matt Fox introduced me to Lawrence Anthony, the Elephant Whisperer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKUjGicMK6A). Anthony, a businessman, eventually opened a game preserve in South Africa. BTW, he is the hero who rescued animals for Saddam Hussein’s Zoo in Bagdad after the American invasion had decimated the zoo and much of its population. Later, he also worked with warring factions in Uganda in an unsuccessful attempt to save white rhinos. Anthony agreed to recuse nine rogue elephants and bring them into the preserve. Initially, the elephants were leery and suspicions of Anthony and would charge him. Eventually, he, by dint of persistent effort, gained the trust of the elephants. When Anthony died at age 62 of a heart attack, his wife and children looked up soon after his death to see two herds approaching their house in the preserve in single file. They hung around two days before going back into the bush. The elephants had not been to the house in eighteen months. The question is, “Who told them that the man who loved them back into life had died?” In the Cosmic Christ, we are one with all of creation. The elephants “knew” that Anthony had died and they came to pay their respects. Morphological patterns “structure” all of creation.

Scientists, some of whom are reluctant to speak of the Cosmic Christ, will readily speak of the Divine Imagination as the strange attractor that is calling all of creation forth to new levels of consciousness. There is a purpose to creation as chaotic as it may seem at time; however, it is moving forth in ever more complexity toward the Omega Point where all will be all in all.

If you have ever communed on a deep level with any animal, the elephant procession makes sense. My Miniature Pincher, Spike, and I communicate. I am only sorry that I cannot always be the person he thinks I am. Several years ago, while sitting in my gazebo in Florida, I sensed something and looked up. The deer stood still and was looking into me. I locked gazes with the deep in such a way that I felt present to the deer. Soon the feelings and sensations morphed into a profound sense of my oneness with all creation. This was not a casual fleeting experience. It lasted more than five minutes and I felt as if I had been somewhere I had never been before. Don’t call out the white coats. These experiences are for real if only we will open ourselves to our connectedness in the Cosmic Christ.