Plunge into Life

     “Plunge into matter, Teilhard said – and at another time, “Plunge into God.” And he said this fine thing: “By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers. … I can and I must throw myself into the thick of human endeavor.”… A secular broker’s life, a shoe salesman’s life, a mechanic’s, a writer’s, a farmer’s? Where else is there? The world and human endeavor catch and hold everyone alive but a handful of hoboes, nuns, and monks.”

     Quoting Jesuit priest and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, author Annie Dillard invites us to shift the focus of our pursuit of the divine from the heavens to the earth, from the afterlife to life here and now. Dillard, like Teilhard, grew to realize that divinity is not “distant and inaccessible,” but that it penetrates us, and we, it; plunging into matter can bring us face-to-face with God by whatever name.

     As both a scientist and a man of faith in the mid 20^th century, Teilhard was a relatively lone voice in the wilderness of his religious tradition. Because of his mystical insight and experience, he found himself at odds with the Vatican, a reality that is humorously expressed by this limerick “There once was a man named Chardin who wrote a book called The Phenomenon of Man. He packed up his tome and took it to Rome, and that’s when the s___ hit the fan!”

     Although the concept that ‘God’ is a word for the spiritual essence of all creation has become more widely embraced, it can still be somewhat jarring to think that the life of a broker, shoe salesman, mechanic, etc. is as replete with the divine as that of a nun or monk – and maybe a handful of hoboes. The point Dillard is making is that whatever our work or personal lives consist of, the places we inhabit and the  people we encounter are where we are most likely to stumble upon  the divine, and that if we dare to plunge into their earthiness we might just realize that we live in the burning layers of God.