A Cosmic Spiral Toward Love

A Cosmic Spiral Toward Love

by Mary Elizabeth Clark, SSJ

In his book The Global Believer, Sjef Donders states clearly how one must be faithful to self by the "inward journey" of contemplation, solitude and prayer like Jesus not just for self- fulfillment, but for others. He speaks of how this happens in Chapter 8 "Love Ever Expanding." This love which overcomes one who is grasped by the Beloved entices her out of the self toward others especially those who are marginalized. The ultimate union, ot the moving toward the center he calls the pulsing heart of love, God's. I resonated with the articulation of love, ecstacy and union in this book and was curious about the mention of Simone Weil's experiences in Chapter 2 where it states, "Christ has united himself with me, in love."

What I had not articulated about my own experiences I found expressed in this book and in some of the descriptions of Simone Weil. There are two experiences I can use as examples. One experience I can recall as an ecstacy of divine love happened to mewhile I was on my thirty day retreat. Before making the retreat, I had deep fears about it. I thought it would be a panful time. On the first day, I spoke with the director about the fears. He suggested that I rest and relx for the next day. The third day I woke to a rainbow shortly after sunrise. That morning, immediately after I had settled to pray, I was completely overcome by a bright light and warm feeling and had to lie down on the floor. I felt the presence of Christ as never before. It was in direct response to my prayer to feel the love of God anew. I knew Christ as my Beloved in a special way. I felt an assurance of that love. Clearly, That moment became for me the ground of my being. I felt drawn in love toward those marginalized persons I saw the next day on the front page of the newspaper.

Later, in an experience of ministry with persons with HIV/AIDS, I found myself at the bedside of Henry who was dying of AIDS. I had a second experience of ecstacy. AS Henry lay dying, his body wasted from the disease, his whole being in pain, he spoke to me of the union he had with his Beloved Jesus. At that moment, I saw the Body of Christ. I knew union with Christ and with all of suffering humanity. It was a moment of grace. I was filled with an expanding kind of love which I found articulated in the description of Simone Weil as mystic in Marie Lagdaleine Davy's book The Mysticism of Simone Weil.

In Davy's description she speaks of the ecstacy of Simone Weil when she states, " When a soul reached the state when its love fills all the world, then love becomes the chick with the golden wings which pierces the eggshell of the world." This book has given me a taste of mysticism of Simone Weil about which I want to read. I created an image in watercolor of the heart of one who has been captured by the Divine. The love spirals out into the universe toward that union of all creation mentioned by both Donders and Weil in their expressions of faithful love.

Members of the CHC Green Sustainability Task Force

Administration:                            Staff:

Lauri Strimkovsky                        Mary Esther Lee, SSJ

Steve Guerrierro                         Michele Mocarsky

Krista Murphy                             Jennifer Thorpe

Ryan Murphy                               Students:

Frank Davis                                 Angela DuBeck

Faculty:                                        Morgan Maguire

Bob Meyer  Jeramy Solema

Marie Conn SEPCHE: Beth Moy

Scott Browning

Carmen Rogers

Lakshmi Atchison

Aramark Director: Rich Ulmer

2013-2014

Theme: Reduce

Deepening our Commitment to reducing land fill, energy use, water use, paper use.

Annual Report of Green Sustainability Task Force of CHC

Presented to Sister Carol Jean Vale August 19, 2013

On October 24, 2012, CHC celebrated National College and University Sustainability Day by launching its campaign to deepen recycling on campus. Sister Carol Jean Vale signed the Saint Francis Pledge to indicate the support of the college community to cooperate.  Krista Murphy and Frank Davis reorganizesd the housekeeping effort to separate paper and cardboard, glass, plastic and metal containers from the contaminated trash with designated containers.  Mr. Rich Ulmer provided additional recycling containers were placed both indoors and outdoors. Three sets of Big Belly Solar Compactors and placed strategically on campus in the Piazza, by the athletic fields and by the steps. Lauri Strimkovsky announced the  purchase of the new bins from a grant received from the Stimulus Package of the federal government. A savings of $10,000-12000 a year is predicted for the paper and cardboard alone! ( more in full report )

Plan for Fall Programs now!
Plan now to present the Catholic Climate Covenant to your parish or faculty in the Fall. Sister Mary Elizabeth Clark, one of 25 Ambassadors of the Catholic Climate Coalition is available to present the program in this NE region. The feast of St. Francis of Assisi October 4 is an appropriate time to offer such a program to parishes, schools and youth groups.Here is a film suggested by the Catholic Climate Covenant.

C.H.C.Green Sustainability Task Force to make Annual Report for Year of Deepening Recycling

The Green Sustainability Task Force will make a year end report for the 2012-13 Year of Recycling.

 Gift Idea

Earth Bags $4.00 @ pick up at SSJ mailroom or add postage for mailing.

Practicing the Principles of the Universe 
as Thomas Berry taught may gradually enhance the evolutionary process within ourselves.
Let us be attentive to the following principles in our daily life.
1. Self-Fulfilling - art, ritual, celebration, cultural celebration, liturgy, spirituality
2. Self-Governing - ethics, animal rights, politics, community development, land trusts
3. Self-Healing - health, toxicity/waste, Earth disease
4. Self-Nourishing - agriculture, food, diet, economics, sustainability
5. Self-Emerging - energy, work, technology, architecture, transportation, housing
6. Self-Educating - schools, alternative education, curriculum
7. Self Propagating - population, women, species habitat, poverty/justice
Steps:
Think about your day. How do I practice these principles? Am I in tune with nature and all other species?
Am I developing a loving harmonious relationship with all that is as I move through my day?
How can I deepen my consciousness about thses principles?

Presentations on Catholic Climate Change Covenant

Presentations by Sister Mary Elizabeth Clark on the Catholic Care for Creation and Climate Change Covenant will take place in the following places.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Bethlehem Village
Flourtown, PA
7:00 pm

Tuesday, September 25, 2012
St. John Chrysostom
Stevenson Center Parish Hall
Wallingford, PA
7:00 pm

Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Church of the Holy Apostles
Glen Burnie, MD
6:30 - 7:45 pm

If you would like to schedule a presentation please call 215-248-7289 or email mclark@ssjphila.org.

Dr. James Hansen Reports on Global Warming

You may have read this article in the Washington Post but just in case you didn't, I have it here for you to see. This is one good reason to introduce your faculty, parish or staff to the Catholic Climate Change Covenant. Sister Mary Elizabeth Clark, an ambassador of the Catholic Climate Change Coalition is available to make a presentation from a Catholic perspective on global climate change. Contact 215-248-7289, mclark@ssjphila.org for a presentation.

 

 

Published on Sunday, August 5, 2012 by The Washington Post

Climate Change is Here — and Worse Than We Thought

NASA's James Hansen, the 'Godfather of Global Warming,' says earlier predictions "too optimistic"

by James Hansen

When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 , I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind’s use of fossil fuels.
But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic.
My projections about increasing global temperature have been proved true. But I failed to fully explore how quickly that average rise would drive an increase in extreme weather.
... our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.

In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.
This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened. Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.
The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year can each be attributed to climate change. And once the data are gathered in a few weeks’ time, it’s likely that the same will be true for the extremely hot summer the United States is suffering through right now.
These weather events are not simply an example of what climate change could bring. They are caused by climate change. The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills.
Twenty-four years ago, I introduced the concept of “climate dice” to help distinguish the long-term trend of climate change from the natural variability of day-to-day weather. Some summers are hot, some cool. Some winters brutal, some mild. That’s natural variability.
But as the climate warms, natural variability is altered, too. In a normal climate without global warming, two sides of the die would represent cooler-than-normal weather, two sides would be normal weather, and two sides would be warmer-than-normal weather. Rolling the die again and again, or season after season, you would get an equal variation of weather over time.
An clean energy economy ... is a simple, honest and effective solution.
But loading the die with a warming climate changes the odds. You end up with only one side cooler than normal, one side average, and four sides warmer than normal. Even with climate change, you will occasionally see cooler-than-normal summers or a typically cold winter. Don’t let that fool you.
Our new peer-reviewed study, published by the National Academy of Sciences, makes clear that while average global temperature has been steadily rising due to a warming climate (up about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century), the extremes are actually becoming much more frequent and more intense worldwide.
When we plotted the world’s changing temperatures on a bell curve, the extremes of unusually cool and, even more, the extremes of unusually hot are being altered so they are becoming both more common and more severe.
The change is so dramatic that one face of the die must now represent extreme weather to illustrate the greater frequency of extremely hot weather events.
Such events used to be exceedingly rare. Extremely hot temperatures covered about 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of the globe in the base period of our study, from 1951 to 1980. In the last three decades, while the average temperature has slowly risen, the extremes have soared and now cover about 10 percent of the globe.
This is the world we have changed, and now we have to live in it — the world that caused the 2003 heat wave in Europe that killed more than 50,000 people and the 2011 drought in Texas that caused more than $5 billion in damage. Such events, our data show, will become even more frequent and more severe.
There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate, but we are wasting precious time. We can solve the challenge of climate change with a gradually rising fee on carbon collected from fossil-fuel companies, with 100 percent of the money rebated to all legal residents on a per capita basis. This would stimulate innovations and create a robust clean-energy economy with millions of new jobs. It is a simple, honest and effective solution.
The future is now. And it is hot.

© 2012 The Washington Post