Prairie Messenger, Muenster, Saskatchewan:
Recovering a spirituality of original goodness

James Conlon.
At the Edge of Our Longing: Unspoken Hunger for Sacredness and Depth.
Toronto: Novalis, 2004.

This reviewer apologizes for not having brought the prophetic wisdom of James Conlon
To public attention the very day the book appeared in print! All that needs to be said about it is: buy it; ponder it; propagate the message everywhere by every means available – and feel the surge of satisfaction for being a true and effective evangelist. Yes, this may very well be the Gospel’s Word of Life for our times.

The book’s relevance is obvious from the Foreword by Diarmuid O’Murchu. This author favored by progressive voices believes that the “previous, familiar world of conventional wisdom no longer holds,” that the “certainties crumble, the clarity fades, the boundaries are stretched.” We have entered “into new territory, disturbing, dangerous, challenging, but for growing numbers among us, exciting and promising.”

O’Murchu knows that “Mystics both ancient and recent” are familiar with the territory but “there is a radical newness” now that Jim Conlon alerts us to “in these opening decades of the 21st century.” How fortunate that Conlon in a Rainer Maria Rilke poem translated by Brother David Steindl-Rast, OSB, an expression that provided a perfect title for the book.
  
Readers will be grateful that the poem follows O’Murchu’s Introduction. The vision, the universal dream that this inspired text promotes is captured in the words of Elizabeth Johnston: “A flourishing humanity on a thriving earth in an evolving universe, all together filled with the glory of  God….Such is the theological vision and praxis we are being called to in this crucial age of Earth’s distress.”
  
To that goal Ernesto Cardinal adds: “We will be the conscience of the universe. And our body will be the whole universe … But first we must establish the kingdom, perfect justice on earth.” Such a lofty goal demands that we “integrate our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others and with the planet” (Mary John Manazan), “with the evolutionary urge and dynamics of the universe” (Carmel Higgins). All this centers in the heart “where we are one with ourselves, with all others and with God” (Steindl-Rast).
  
Conlon is convinced that the soul’s longing for the divine, for God, must be grounded in the realities of the human story. Such longing will fashion a compassionate existence for “a flourishing humanity on a thriving earth in an evolving universe, all together filled with the glory of God” (Johnston).
  
Essential to Conlon’s vision is a “new spirituality being born today unprecedented in human history.” He sees “growing evidence of an emerging planetary spirituality.” Such a spirituality is basic to what Passionist Thomas Berry has called the “reinvention of humanity and culture.”
  
Conlon’s book is a blueprint for a “mystical and engaged cosmology” capable of bringing about “an awakening to the deep presence of the sacred, an encounter with beauty, a threshold to divine mystery, a language of sacredness and soul.”   Providing this taste of Conlon’s own prose may empower us to “counteract terrorism, nuclear proliferation, military expansion, poverty for the many, and affluence for the few.” Adopting this book’s plea for cosmic consciousness may bring about action in the world “to heal what is broken and renew the face of the earth s we embrace mystery,  creativity and compassion.”