Bill Wilson, SJ

     Some years ago, while I was living in Thunder Bay, I used to go out to our cottage on One Island Lake. One winter evening I went out for a walk. It was one of those evenings that was crisp and clear and the stars seemed within an easy grasp. On the way back I stopped to look at the stars. As I stood there the realization came, “this is my home. I have a right to be here.”
     The realization was not that this piece of land, but the whole universe was my home. Prior to this I felt somewhat like a misfit, that I really didn’t belong. But here I felt that I was being embraced by a presence that was assuring me I was welcomed. The sense of that presence waxes and wanes but I know that it is always there and is a great comfort for me.

     Some years ago, while I was living in Thunder Bay, I used to go out to our cottage on One Island Lake. One winter evening I went out for a walk. It was one of those evenings that was crisp and clear and the stars seemed within an easy grasp. On the way back I stopped to look at the stars. As I stood there the realization came, “this is my home. I have a right to be here.”
     The realization was not that this piece of land, but the whole universe was my home. Prior to this I felt somewhat like a misfit, that I really didn’t belong. But here I felt that I was being embraced by a presence that was assuring me I was welcomed. The sense of that presence waxes and wanes but I know that it is always there and is a great comfort for me.
     It seems to me, that I’m experiencing Savary’s 5th principle of Teilhard, “We all live and move and have our being in the Divine Milieu.” Traditionally spiritual writers explained God as either transcendent or immanent. Transcendent, means that God is remote or wholly other. God often gets portrayed as some one we have to appease or to beg for some favour. The adjunct to that is that we are often perceived as being unworthy of this God’s attention.
     Immanence means that God is within all things including me. God dwells within me and is as close to me as my own heart and as Hopkins has said, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
     These two views can often be in conflict with each other, but as Ken Wilber has stated they need to complement each other otherwise there will only be destruction.
     I feel Teilhard has combined these two with his idea of the Divine Milieu. We are in the Milieu as a fish is in the water. We may not often be aware of it, but it is sustaining us and giving us life and transformation. As Diarmuid O’Murchu states, “We are dealing with a type of mystical intuition, endowed with a strong resistance against any human attempt to controlling God. It seeks a radical transparency to the mysterious unfolding of the creative universe, with the underlying conviction (often poorly articulated) that Holy Mystery breaks out and breaks through in the evolutionary unfolding of universal life. Our human task is not to speculate about God but to co-create its dynamic unfolding.”