Plenitude and the Iron Core of the Essential
A Short Reflection for August
Dear Friends and Family,
Several months ago, we began a new series of short reflections to lead the forthcoming month’s letters. Today, we turn to the theme of simplicity in our months-long series Silence, Solitude, and Simplicity.
I thought we might explore the theme of simplicity through the two-fold experience of plenitude and poverty.
Paleontologist and Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin provides our beginning.
I find it difficult to express how much I feel at home in precisely this world of electrons, nuclei, waves, and what a sense of plenitude and comfort it gives me. The Consistent, the Total, the Unique, the Essential . . . the vast cosmic realities (Mass, Permeability, Radiation, Curatures, and so on) through which the Stuff of Things is disclosed to our experience in a form which is patient at the same time of being indefinitely reduced to elements. . . .
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Heart of the Matter
Disclosed in a form which is patient.
I’ve never thought about things this way. Perhaps it’s why, when we soften into something, the Universe provides but when we are gripping it feels so different.
This makes it so difficult from the aspect of poverty as it must be very hard not to feel frantic, like one must pull things toward one’s self, to make ends meet.
What a poverty to not be able to see the magnificent nature of our bodies and nature. All "permeable" in motion, speaking in languages of chemistry, biology, physics, etc. The beauty that we all break down to simple elements, makes us more alike then ever! Now that is plenitude!