As we experience the Universe, our hearts and
minds become infused with its powers.
JAMES CONLON, Ph.D.
Facilitator for Spirituality and the New Earth Story
Introduction by Diarmid O'Murchu, MSC
I am fascinated by the title of this book. It evokes several connections with what modem scientists call "the edge of chaos" which does not describe the onset of chaos but its after-effects. Chaos theory describes a state of intemal dislocation, because the old certainties don't make sense anymore. The order begins to disintegrate, disorder ensues, and the system veers toward a freshly discovered sense of coherence.
This is the edge of chaos. The old will never be the same again, but the new is still unfolding, sometimes confusing, chaofic, stretching, even exciting. It is not neat and precise like the old order, but intuition tells us that it is a great deal more real, and this is what compels credibility.
Jim Conlon brings a creative and intuitive mind to this "edge of our longings," but he goes beyond the longing into the real of belonging. And the belonging is no longer just personal, interpersonal, or social. It is planetary, global, and cosmic. This is Conlon's revolutionary insight. Moving through the four spheres of Soul, Life, Earth, and the Divine, the psychologist with me hears resonances, of stages of developmental growth. The difference, of course, is that these are planetary/cosmic stages and not merely personal ones.
This is precisely what the edge of chaos is about. The previous, familiar world of conventional wisdom no longer holds. The certainties crumble, the clarity fades, the boundaries are stretched, often beyond recognition. We are into new territory; disturbing, dangerous, challenging, but for growing numbers among us, exciting and promising. Assuredly, we have been there before, and nobody knows the territory better than the mystics both ancient and recent. Jim Conlon graciously acknowledges their enduring contribution.
But even for the mystics there is a radical newness. We encounter a new evolutionary movement that is beginning to dawn upon our world. None of us has been there before. We need fresh wisdom for our time and for our journey. You would be advised to take along a copy of At the Edge of Our Longings. You'll find it a useful resource, solace for
the turbulent times, guidance, at the crossroads, and above all reassurance for the different future that embraces our world in these opening decades of the 21' century."
“Jim Conlon has ‘big picture spirituality.’" Here your politics and your prayer, your loves and your longings can all move from one grounded centre where God is good, where we are together and where everything belongs."
- Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M., author of Everything Belongs
"The title of this book, in all its simplicity, evokes the deepest sensitivities of the human soul. It reveals the poetic quality of the work itself "
- Thomas Berry, author of The Great Work and The Dream of Earth
"We have the new cosmology - the question now is how do we implement it in our culture? Jim Conlon’s book is our finest roadmap.”
- Brian Swimme, author of The Hidden heart of the Cosmos: Humanity and the New Story.
"Jim Conlon's book helps people to incorporate spirituality in their everyday lives and in this way to feel more humane and in solidarity with all the beings in the universe.”
- Leonardo Boff, author of Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor
"In his new book, Jim Conlon shows once again his deep ability to interconnect the spiritual journey and the awareness of the cosmos as the community of life and God's self-manifestation in the created universe.”
- Rosemary Radford Ruether, author of Ethics for a Small Planet
"This a thoughtful and thought-filled book that provides readers with many opportunities to reflect on their lives and their place within God's sacred and dynamic universe."
- Dennis O'Hara, Director of the Elliot Allen Institute in Theology and Ecology, University of St. Michael's College, Toronto
"In a time of confusion and anxiety, this lovely book brings us into the true geography of longing. It urges the imagination towards the true depths." John O'Donohue, author of Ancon Cara and Eternal Echoes "I love the way this combines insightful text reflections by James Conlon with well-chosen poetry and quotes and practical guides for deepening one's own spiritual practice."
- Patricia M. Mische, author of Star Wars and the State of Our Souls
"This book leads indeed to the edge of our longing, which turns out to be the cutting edge of cosmology - the point where the human heart connects to the heart of the cosmos."
- Brother David Steindi-Rast, OSB
"At the Edge of Our Longing is a rich treasure of insights, experiences, challenges, and spiritual wisdom that should be read slowly and meditatively - a little at a time."
- Albert Nolan, OP, author of Jesus Before Christianity
"This a thoughtful and thought-filled book that provides readers with many opportunities to reflect on their lives and their place within God's sacred and dynamic universe."
- Dennis O'Hara, Director of the Elliot Allen Institute in Theology and Ecology, University of St. Michael's College, Toronto
"In a time of confusion and anxiety, this lovely book brings us into the true geography of longing. It urges the imagination towards the true depths."
- John O'Donohue, author of Ancon Cara and Eternal Echoes
By Stephen B. Scharper
James Conlon. At the Edge of Our Longing: Unspoken Hunger for Sacredness and Depth. Toronto: Novalis, 2004.
The environmental and social horrors of Hurricane Katrina, which rendered thousands of New Orleans’ most vulnerable residents—the poor, the elderly, people of colour—bereft of homes and help, exposed, through roiling floodwaters, a ghastly underside of U.S. society.
Like a Jerry Springer show gone bad, the footage from New Orleans revealed desperately poor minorities struggling to survive an ecological disaster that quickly segued into a social horror. Days upon days persons struggled to survive, without food or potable water while awaiting rescue that often didn’t arrive until after death staked its claim. Many in North America and around the world realized, for the first time, that these persons had somehow been transformed from U.S. citizens to non-persons. Owing to their colour and economic caste, many observed, they fell below the radar screen of the Bush Administration’s concern. Katrina made clear that short-sighted ecological policies, such as the destruction of surge-absorbing wetlands for oil refineries and cut-backs to levee reinforcement—have the most devastating effects upon the impoverished and marginalized.
For the two-thirds of the world, particularly in nations of the South who daily dwell in grueling poverty, this non-person status is a familiar one. When natural disasters befall them, they have learned not to expect much help from governments that have long abandoned them, literally and figuratively, to the garbage heaps of their societies.
Writing from El Salvador, Jesuit priest and theologian Jon Sobrino, in his latest book, Where Is God? Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope, reflects on the catastrophic earthquakes of January 13 and February 13, 2001 that pummeled his nation, leaving several thousand dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. As Sobrino notes, living in El Salvador is always a heavy burden. Officially, half the population dwells in extreme poverty, and many still suffer injuries and psychological scars from the civil way of 1980- 1992, which claimed over 75,000 lives, including six of Sobrino’s Jesuit confreres (dragged from their beds and butchered by the Salvadoran military in 1989.)
For Sobrino, these earthquakes are not just tragedies, but “x-rays” of the country. “It is mostly poor who get killed, the poor who are buried, the poor who face enormous obstacles trying to rebuild their lives.” He likens these natural disasters to cemeteries—some tombs are grand and “sumptuous pantheons of luxurious marble. Others, almost without names or crosses, are piled up in hidden places and consigned to anonymity. These are the majority.”
Sobrino highlights a nexus between environmental degradation and victimization of the poor. Before the 2001 quakes, ecologists and engineers warned that the deforestation of El Salvador’s Balsamo Mountains rendered any housing developments in the area extremely vulnerable to mudslides. Ignoring these protests, hundreds of homes were built, and when the quakes occurred, 270 houses and hundreds of residents were buried in mud four meters deep.
In reflecting on the earthquakes from a Christian perspective, Sobrino points to the need for solidarity rather than simple charity, a sustained commitment to the areas not only to rebuild their hoes, but to build up their communities and weave the “fabric of human relations.”
Sobrino wonders if, in the broader view, we can have real solidarity on a planet where one child in the First World consumes as many resources as 400 children in Ethiopia. Calling for a type of Marshall Plan for the South, Sobrino suggests that unless we “build the Third World, the whole planet is at risk.”
A house divided against itself cannot stand, especially when it is slammed by earthquakes or hurricanes.
James Conlon, an Ontario-born Catholic Priest now teaching in California, also strives to bring the notion of solidarity with the poor into conversation with those advancing solidarity with the4 earth. In his most recent work, At the Edge of Our Longing: Unspoken Hunger for Sacredness and Depth, Conlon strives to meld the “preferential option for the poor” of Jon Sobrino with the “new cosmology” of “geologian” Thomas Berry, who underscores a sense of awe and mystery at the unfolding universe as the basis of ecological concern.
“The world today is one of unregulated markets, “Conlon writes, “where there is a widening gap between the rich and the poor; where the ecological consequences of our destructive behaviour are increasingly visible and felt, where the longings of life are unsatisfactorily responded to by the ashes of consumerism and entertainment.”
Citing Jon Sobrino’s insight that the poor of the world are a diagnostic site exposing the fissures of our moral economy, Conlon argues that the most pressing hallmarks of our world are extreme poverty and ecological destruction. For Conlon, authentic spirituality begins with these two realities, and crystallizes in an “engaged cosmology,” an attempt to find a “new story,” as Thomas Berry has urged. Such a story is “dynamic, interactive and relational, a story that dissolves anthropocentrism, individualism, and greed, a story to enhance the work of partnership and justice, to eradicate systems of oppression…and be attentive to the choices of creation, liberation, and contemplation.”
The quest to marry a solidarity with the poor with a solidarity for the Earth, as reflect5ed in Sobrino and Conlon’s latest offerings, is perhaps one of the most urgent, and important, religious tasks of our present century. And as natural disasters appear to be increasing in frequency and intensity, perhaps owing in part to human activity, as the UN State of the World Report, 1972-1992 suggests, the poor will suffer even greater hardship in future.