dharmatalks

“Some day,” wrote Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, “after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness… the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.”

What happens, when you carry a lit candle into a darkened room? The light dissipates the darkness effortlessly. This demonstrates for us that darkness is nothing more than the absence of light.

Similarly, when we begin to recognise that whatever is not love must necessarily be fear, we can begin to understand fear as the absence of love. Jesus, the embodiment of Divine Love, understood this. His consciousness of Love was able to penetrate the darkest fears of those around Him, bringing healing to those who would accept it. People were drawn to that deeply penetrating love, because it resonated with the truth about who they were. And wherever the truth that God is Love was recognised, peace and healing dwelled within.

That awareness… that Sacred Mindfulness of Love is the source of light that dispels even the darkest of night. “Let your light shine before others,” Jesus is said to have admonished His disciples. (cf Matthew 5:16) He goes on to explain that we let that light shine by all that we say and do.

We stand on the brink, I believe, of a time when the vision of Tielhard de Chardin is about to come true. Simply resigning ourselves to the archane and extant doctrines, superstitious dogma, limiting and exclusionary creeds of institutional religions is no longer enough. We feel it. We want something more. We long for the light.

We’re standing at the brink of dawn. We’re about to rediscover fire!

When I was living in D.C., we had a small community of college students who came by for Mass, most of whom were attending Catholic University of America or Trinity College. I really grew to love those kids, who would stick around after services to grab a pizza and talk about theology and see how we could further liberate the Message of Christ from Christianity.

During the summer, many of the kids would go back home, so we had a smaller, more intimate group of kids come by. The occasional straggler would pop in, sometimes for Mass, sometimes just to talk. One evening, one of those occasional