Retreat - Teilhard’s Mysticism: Spiraling into the Cosmic Christ

In an early essay, Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin provides us with a road map into the intensely mystical environment in which he lived and moved. He describes the stages of his mystical growth in terms of five concentric circles. These circles, which could be more properly imaged as the loops of a spiral that he continually revisited throughout his life, provided him with a sacred path into an ever deepening reality, a reality that is informed as much by the science of his time as it is by his religious tradition. They help us trace his growth and development as he plunged ever more deeply into the heart of matter and into the heart of God, where he found the radiance of a loving, cosmic Person—the God for evolution. During this retreat, through input, prayer, song, film, contemplative activities, and sharing, we follow Teilhard as he travels ever more deeply from Circle to Circle into the arms of the Cosmic Christ.