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The Intersection of Spirituality & Science

The Intersection of Spirituality & Science.

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The Intersection of Spirituality & Science

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  1. The Intersection of Spirituality & Science

  2. I want to credit Fr Stephen Sundborg, S,J. President of Seattle University and Professor John Hardt, Ph.D., Assistant to the President for Mission & Identity at Loyola University Chicago from whom I have drawn much of the material that follows in this power point presentation.

  3. Catholic Leadership & Spirituality • Leadership & Spirituality are both existential and only seen in reality when alive in a person • Leadership is personal and intimate and calls for a lot of inner work • Leadership does not mean leaving yourself behind

  4. The word leader can be alienating but….. • When thought of as influencing others through relationship it is easier for many to see ourselves as leaders

  5. The “I” and the “IT” • It can be deadening if you are drawn into the expectations of the “IT.” • Most powerful way to live out leadership is to do so from one’s spirituality • Be “you” and not the role • We need to have our rudder fully in the water of our feelings in order to be able to steer our course of leadership • If not plugged into the “I” you will be living someone else’s life

  6. Spirituality • EVERYONE HAS A SPIRITUALITY

  7. What is Spirituality? • Spirituality is, “One’s lived relationship to mystery.” Stephen Sundborg, S.J.

  8. Religion & Spirituality • Religion is a secondary interpretation of the mystery we experience when life is broken open for us • Religions do something with spirituality • But mystery is the primordial experience • Spirituality is the way life takes shape in you

  9. How Do you Know What Your Spirituality Is? • What symbols really grasp you? • Words/ideas only get at us to a certain level • Symbols reach deeply and get hold of us entirely

  10. Reflect on the symbols that have power on you • The symbols that remain significant over time can be called “life symbols” • E.g. “Alone in a boat without oars or sail in the midst of ocean under midnight sky.” Ruth Burrows, OCD • Our Life Symbol calls us to do something –to be someone

  11. What does the life symbol of someone who sees that symbol as being “alone in a boat without oars or sail in the midst of ocean under midnight sky” call her to do? • YOU GOTTA LET LIFE GET AT YOU -----YOU GOTTA TRUST/SURRENDER

  12. Another Example of a Life Symbol • A knight in service to a great and magnanimous King who calls this knight into a camp of service and the doing of good • WHO IS THIS?

  13. What does Ignatius of Loyola’s life Symbol call him to? • Something big with others.

  14. Ignatius of Loyola & Sister Ruth Burrows, OCD called to something entirely different because of their different life symbols. • Leading out of one’s Spirituality is powerful/transformative

  15. How Do You Care for Your Spirituality? • Every Day One Hour • Every Week One Day • Every Month One Weekend • Every Year One Week

  16. How Do You Care for Your Spirituality? • Music • Friendships • Art • Nature • Dialogue • Justice • Service • Research

  17. How Do You Care for Your Spirituality? • Go Deeper within • Don’t let immediate conflict override deeper convictions • Keep A Wider Perspective

  18. Norman MacLean, Young Men and Fire” c. 1992 • The problem of self-identity is not just a problem for the young. It is a problem all the time. Perhaps the problem. It should haunt old age, and when it no longer does it should tell you that you are dead.”

  19. Jesuit Education • Jesuit Education born from a Spirituality • “Finding God in all things.” • But if God is to be found in all things we must be able to see all things.

  20. Marilynne Robinson “Gilead” 2004 • “It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor grey mater of creation and turns it into radiance---for a moment or a year or the span of a life…. . Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see.”

  21. What Do Jesuit Universities like Fairfield do? • They are world affirming • Ignatian Spirituality is about going into the world • God is in the world • God is in all creation

  22. The Church of the Gesu in Rome

  23. Pied BeautyGerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89) • GLORY be to God for dappled things—For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.All things counter, original, spare, strange;Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:Praise him.

  24. What’s behind the beautiful world Hopkins is caught up in? • What’s within it? • The Beauty of Creation points to God.

  25. Why is this approach to seeing the world important for our schools, our parishes, our Catholic Universities? • We hold out hope of finding God in the world? • Yet, this kind of seeing(the eternal in the ephemeral) is not at all obvious.

  26. Jesuit priest Fr. Stephen Schloesser, S.J. refers to this as “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” • Roman Catholic Answer to this is that we anchor the passing of our world in God. Sacraments used to talk about this in Roman Catholicism. • E.g. Denise Levertov’s “City Psalms” –Paradise is not beyond the city but within it. She sees differently. • God penetrates our world even where we do not expect to find him.

  27. How Do We Come To See God in All Things? • Not an easy answer • Cognitive Psychology helps us • We filter information---we see it particularly • “Tree of Life” a film by Terrence Malick (2011)----Chance only happens to the prepared mind. • So, how do we do it? • We must love something to see it? • Love of all God’s creation. • Repeated habit of love gives you a knowledge of the texture of someone or something

  28. So where does Science fit into all this? • Faith is a gift we receive from our parents, siblings and teachers who taught us • We question it, we grow with it, and in the end, as mature adults, we continue to accept it or not

  29. Science and Religious FaithA Conflict? “As I do my science I find that it supports my faith, it enriches it, it gives it a whole new dimension. But I have never come to know God, to see God to believe in God through doing science. He’s not the conclusion of some sort of process of my personal scientific investigations. But, my scientific investigation, because God is reflected n the world in which he made, in some sense, my scientific investigation has always supported my belief in God in a very real sense.” Fr. George V Coyne, S,.J.

  30. “It helps me to pray better. I have made more things to pray about, my prayer is enriched , et cetera. As a religious priest I find it very enriching experience to do scientific research. So far from there being any conflict, … being a scientist helps to support both my life and as a Jesuit and my belief in God. “

  31. Does Science diminish both human beings and God? • “For me science is an attempt to understand, it’s an attempt to understand the universe. And I can’t see for the life of me how an attempt to understand the universe, which I believe comes form God, can alienate us from God. So I would defend science on the basis that it is an attempt to understand the universe, not an attempt to manipulate the universe.”

  32. How does the Church react today when faced with the new developments in science like genetics?

  33. “I think it’s correct to say that Christinaity has always had a sort of ability to absorb the developments in scince. But, it’s always done it very slowly. SO take the Copernican revolution, it took the church centuries before it realized that the Copernican revolution was actually a contribution to the life of the Church, the development of our view of ourselves in terms of the Universe, and before our view of God, et cetera. But, that took centuries, and struggles, and conflicts before that happened. I think today the Church faces a a very real challenge in not repeating the errors of the past, in sort of a stand off, a fear of science. I’m referring in particular to the life sciences today, and especially developments in research in genetics.”

  34. A Catholic university…community is animated by a spirit of freedom and charity; it is characterized by mutual respect, sincere dialogue, and protection of the rights of individuals. “ • John Paul II, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Para. 21.

  35. So what? • Wake Up • “Find God in all things” even Science • We have nothing to Fear if we maintain an attitude of mutual respect, sincere dialogue, and protection of the rights of individuals.

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