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Chapter 1: Feeding the Zest for Life: Spiritual Energy Resources for the Future of Humanity
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c h a p t e r 1 Feeding the Zest for Life: Spiritual Energy Resources for the Future of Humanity Ursula King Reflections on the future of humankind, and its further social, cultural and spiritual development, feature prominently in the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. His thoughts on these matters can be a splendid resource for our contemporary efforts to move forward in building a more interdependent network of mutual responsibility and care within the global community. He expressed with clarity and forcefulness that we are one humanity, with one origin, and one destiny. We have not yet reached maturity in terms of our possibilities; our immense problems somehow resemble the turmoils of youth. Teilhard argued that all of humankind should bear a profound sense of responsibility for the shape of its own future, and that this future must be developed in close interrelation with all forms of life, and with the whole of nature in its global and planetary dimensions. Central to his thinking about creating in the future a more integrated form of oneness for humanity are several key ideas: the zest for life in advancing the growth of humanity to achieve a better life for all; the noosphere as an expanding sphere of human thought and invention, of will and 3 4 Ursula King work, of love and action; the need for material and spiritual energy resources in assuring the future of humanity; and the contribution of world faiths in providing spiritual energy resources for feeding the zest for life. I shall deal with each briefly as they are mutually embedded and interdependent on each other. 1. The Future of Humanity and the Zest for Life Teilhard de Chardin wrote about the future of humanity in a collection of essays called The Future of Man. These essays are preceded by the motto: ‘‘The whole future of the Earth, as of religion, seems to me to depend on the awakening of our faith in the future.’’1 He combined such faith in the future with what he called faith in man (that is, in the potential and further development of human beings), with faith in peace, and with faith in the greater unity and global collaboration among the peoples of the earth. Teilhard began to reflect on these matters after the First World War; he subsequently developed and further clarified them during the 1920s, 1930s and especially the 1940s, when he completed his magnum opus, the book The Human Phenomenon,2 written during his stay in China. Teilhard’s concern for the future of human beings , and all of life, was expressed with a new urgency after the Second World War, when he became increasingly aware of the radical transformations occurring within the human community on planet earth. It was in post-war Paris that he also got involved with a pioneering group, Le Congrès Universel des Croyants. Set up by Sir Francis Younghusband in London in 1936, it was interreligious in nature, and founded as a French branch of the British World Congress of Faiths. Teilhard’s association with this group remains largely unknown, but he refers to it in his correspondence, and he wrote five essays between 1947 and 1950 specifically addressed to them.3 In 1947 he was invited to provide the inaugural address, represented by his essay ‘‘Faith in Man’’4 for Le Congrès Universel des Croyants. Here, as elsewhere, he expresses his faith [44.222.169.53] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:07 GMT) 5 Feeding the Zest for Life in the further intellectual, moral and spiritual development of human beings around the globe. He writes: ‘‘A profound common aspiration arising out of the very shape of the modern world—is not this specifically what is most to be desired, what we most need to offset the growing forces of dissolution and dispersal at work among us?’’5 How equally true this is today! We are experiencing inequality and injustice, numerous wars, violence, disaster, and immense human suffering in so many parts of the globe. Yet the hope and longing of so many millions, and the need for greater human unity and integration, for mutual help and encouragement, for the sharing of material and spiritual resources—and that includes the sharing of ideas and visions—are greater than ever. More than fifty years ago Teilhard sensed this great contradiction between our deepest longings for the genuinely new possibilities for humankind and the...