Our second annual celebration of Jesuit priest, theologian, anthropologist and philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

We will celebrate the life of this integral/evolutionary pioneer by reading and discussing his work while enjoying a family-friendly potluck meal. PLEASE BRING A DISH TO SHARE.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (May 1, 1881 – April 10, 1955) was a French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist. He conceived the vitalist idea of the Omega Point (a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving) and developed Vladimir Vernadsky’s concept of the Noosphere.

Although many of Teilhard’s writings were censored by the Catholic Church during his lifetime because of his views on original sin, Teilhard has been posthumously praised by Pope Benedict XVI and other eminent Catholic figures, and his theological teachings were cited by Pope Francis in the 2015 encyclical, Laudato si’.

Teilhard’s life work was predicated on his conviction that human spiritual development is moved by the same universal laws as material development. He wrote, “…everything is the sum of the past” and “…nothing is comprehensible except through its history. ‘Nature’ is the equivalent of ‘becoming’, self-creation: this is the view to which experience irresistibly leads us. … There is nothing, not even the human soul, the highest spiritual manifestation we know of, that does not come within this universal law.”