Introduction: Miriam MacGillis is a modern-day prophet who not only holds a broad understanding of cosmology but brilliantly expresses it. She was an early colleague of Thomas Berry, introducing many people to the Story of the Universe. I have had the great honor of transcribing the eight tapes of her lecture series called Education for a Small Planet from 1986. Excerpts from tape 1A can be read here and here.
She was a protégé of Thomas Berry and on these tapes spoke about three principles which have been at the heart of the unfolding of the universe from the beginning. As she says, They are very simple and can’t be separated. I’m just separating them now [to discuss them]. In reality they’re three in one. They are extremely simple. Very often, the simplest things are the hardest things to grasp. But once we really begin to reflect on them and their implications, it’s so logical, so clear, so simple.
The first is the principle of differentiation. I posted Miriam’s discussion of differentiation here.
Below is the long delayed 2nd part, where she discusses the next two principles; interiority and communion. Her words have been lightly edited.
Second principle. The principle of interiority. Or subjectivity. And all that means is that whether we’re speaking about this particular atom or whether this is Harry or Henry or Homer or horse, or hippo, each is its own unique articulation of the universe, its own integrity. It has its own inner spaces, which are unique to itself. Hydrogen is hydrogen, it is not helium. And it is hydrogen because as you probe the inner spaces of that, whatever causes that to be hydrogen in those inner spaces has an integrity that will always unfold hydrogen. And the universe only can be at any moment, the sum total of all of that. And because each is what it is, it’s different.
And the human is finally the one capable of comprehending that. The role of the human is to be able to contemplate it. It is to be able to contemplate the other as sacred whether it’s the whale or the hydrogen atom, the blade of grass, or Harry. And that’s the function of the human. The human is capable of awe, of reverence and of nonviolence. The human is capable of justice, the sense of truthful reciprocal relationship with the whole community of beings. And it is the child who [grows up] enabled and empowered to understand that, will be the fittest to survive.
The third principle is the principle of communion which means that from the very beginning each differentiated interiority only could be because it was bonded to everything else that was. The universe has always been a single communion, a mutually indwelling communion event which expands, always in communion with itself, inwardly and outwardly.
In the physical expression of that, that electro-magnetic fields holds every atom together, every star in its orbit, every planet in its orbit around the sun, every sun fixed where it is in the galaxy, every galaxy around other galaxies, the entire universe. That field of attraction which holds things together is strongest as it takes two differentiated interiorities and fuses them together into some homogeneous meaningless smudge.
Every atom stays articulated. If you could see into my hand, every cell is articulated. But it’s bonded. That force is not so weak that things disintegrate and fall apart and fragment. My hand holds together but my hand is a communion of millions of differentiated interiorities, totally mutually indwelling with each other. That bondedness is the law. That is a single communion. It is a single community of beings all different.
We, as teachers, enable the child to unfold as a person. [A child needs to understand] that s/he is an interiority that is good and lovable and unique and different. This process grows the child who has his act together, the child who knows who she is, because she is loved and she knows her value. She knows who she is who is capable of dealing with others who are different.
It’s the child who has that sense of integrity who can have people differ from her in looks, in values, in music, in dress, in opinions, in pressures, in ethnic background, in racial differences, religious differences. It’s the child who is in touch with her own interiority who can celebrate and listen to the other.
And when we’re able to celebrate the other, then we commune. We become the bonding out of awareness and freedom. The human is the being who takes that force of mutual indwelling, that communion and brings it into awareness and freedom. That’s what love is.
Love is a star holding itself together because it knows, reveres, delights, enjoys and celebrates. The child who can deal with the difference of the other frees the other to be who he is. As they both evolve in that differentiation, the enrichment of their communion expands each of them.
It’s the child who doesn’t know who she is, the child who has no sense of her own integrity that demands that the other be like her. Demands that the other be a mirror into whom she can look and find herself affirmed. And that puts a lid on the other. And neither grow. That violation is a violation of the deepest mysteries of the universe. And husbands and wives do it to each other. Parents and teachers do it to kids and kids do it each other and the TV does it to all of us. Nation-states do it to nation-states. Religions do it to religions. Cultures do it to cultures. We all do it to the Earth. We even make our pets like us and wonder why they are neurotic.
It’s the physicist who says to us that either we are [gaining that realization of] who we are as humans or we are going to perish. Now we are not fooling around with bows and arrows in our preoccupation with making others conform. We’re not fooling around with cannons, we’re not fooling around with high level artillery, we are now fooling around with radioactive isotopes. We’ve put them into our weapons and [we’ve got tens of thousands of them] and we’ve put them all under the Mother. They are massive tumors waiting to go off. If we’re not going to give our children the skills and tools necessary to survive, if all we give them are the buttons to press on these weapons, we have not only failed our children, we have failed the whole 15 billion year journey of the universe.
Berry says we have to redefine ourselves at a species level and we’ve got to teach our children the new story of who they are in the most comprehensive form. We’ve got to stop telling them the story in religion that sees that development of the person in the faith and spiritual tradition cut off from the tradition of the universe. And we’ve got to stop the scientific story of the universe cut off from the spiritual dimension that is part of it.
But when we put this story together, what we have recently come to understand from the journey of the spirit, the faith journey of the Earth’s peoples and their various spiritual traditions. Differentiation, interiority, communion: We begin to realize that this is the core of those traditions. This was the heart of the law of Moses, this is the heart of the teaching of Buddha, this is the heart of the teaching of Jesus. They said them different ways, but each was a conscious, aware, expression that this had to be at the heart of the human meaning, the human journey, the human person. This is the heart of the matter
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