The Integral Message

The Inter-Related World

Relational Spirituality, as I present it, becomes clearly seen as relevant once we recognise that all things are interrelated – a perception which emerged with the development of quantum physics – from the physical world to the mental and ultimately to all that is mystical. We have been challenged to view life anew.

One extraordinary scientific-theological pioneer of the Christian faith of the 20th century was Teilhard de Chardin. Speaking of the idea of being able to break off a fragment of creation and study it separately, de Chardin wrote:

It is time to point out that this procedure is merely an intellectual dodge. Considered in its physical, concrete reality…… the universe cannot divide itself but, as a kind of gigantic “atom”, it forms in its totality … the only real indivisible …. The farther and more deeply we penetrate into matter, by means of increasingly powerful methods, the more we are confounded by the interdependence of its parts. Each element of the cosmos is positively woven from all the others… It is impossible to cut into this network, to isolate a portion without it becoming frayed and unravelled at all its edges. All around us, as far as the eye can see, the universe holds together, and only one way of considering it is really possible, that is, to take it as a whole in one piece[1]

Wilber,K. (1993) The Spectrum of Consciousness. Wheaton, Illinois, Quest Books p 39

Father Bill Stoeger, a Jesuit priest and astrophysicist, is an adjunct associate professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona in Tucson, researching subjects like the cosmic microwave background radiation, and black hole astrophysics, especially the astrophysics of galaxies and quasars. He is also interested in the relationship between religion and science, more precisely, the relationships between theology, science and philosophy. While speaking on the ABC Radio National programme ‘Encounter’ in 2007, he advocated an understanding of the interrelated nature of life.

Speaking from his own field of endeavour, biochemistry:

Now the most important thing for our consideration is that all life on earth that recently exists on earth, and that we have any record of, is interrelated. The same biochemistry that we have in our bodies is shared with all other life.

He expands his vision by drawing attention to the extensive complexity of these relationships.

The basic idea that I’m trying to put across here is the fact that everything that we have, everything that we are, is deeply interconnected and interconnected in various ways. ... We start off with very simple things, and we put them together and those inter-relationships at each level are absolutely crucial for the new types of systems and beings that emerge. And there is the whole issue of what we call the formational and functional integrity of creation, that everything is working together and everything has inherent dynamic characteristics to enable it to be what it is.

All the processes and the relationships that the different entities of nature have with one another, all those dynamic relationships in some sense I would see God as imminent in them, deeply present and holding them in existence; not in a way that would be distilled out by some physical experiment, but in the sense as the ground of their very being and operation.

This understanding is not merely an incidental bi-product of God’s involvement; rather it is the central priority, ………. God’s priorities are relationality, love and communion which require freedom and autonomy of response.'

Stoeger, F. B. (2007). ABC Radio National, 621am, Encounter. Australia. Sunday 15th April, 2007