Love is the Heart of the Cosmos

Living in Harmony with the Universe

By J. Michael Conley, D. Min.April 2013

What is Love?• Love begins as allurement – as attraction.• Before it is ever an activity or behavior, love is

that impulse, motivation, or energy that links us to the whole web of life.

• This attracting activity is a fundamental mystery.• Love is the internal power and energy that

makes everything whole.• Love is not primarily something we make or do,

but something we are.

• The basic dynamism of the universe is the attraction each galaxy has for every other galaxy.

• On a cosmic scale, Love is the basic binding energy found everywhere in reality.

Love is Basic to the Universe

Love Ignites BeingLove is a word that points to the alluring activity of the cosmos.

This primal dynamism awakens communities of atoms, galaxies, stars, families, nations, persons, ecosystems, oceans and stellar systems.

Think of the tremendous galactic tasks performed every instant by the universe, and you begin to feel the magnificence of the cosmic allurement of love, igniting being and enhancing life.

• To be interested is to fall in love.• To become fascinated is to step into a wild love affair on any level of

life.• Each person discovers a

field of allurements.• Destiny unfolds in the

pursuit of individual fas-cinations and interests.

• By pursuing your allurements, you help bind the universe together. The unity of theworld rests on the pursuit

of passion.

Love Begins When We Discover Interest

We Cannot Explain Why These Attractions Exist.• Humans are interested in

certain things, certain people, certain activities.

• Each “interest” is as fundamental to the universe as is the gravitational attraction our Earth feels for the Sun.

• We cannot explain why these attractions exist.

• We can only become aware of them.

• This mysterious attraction that we call “fascination” is as mysterious, as basic, as the allurement that we call gravitation.

The Destiny of Humanity is to Become Love in Human Form

The Love Affair of Humanity

• We learn about becoming love by falling in love, then reflecting on the experience and what it taught us.

• Immerse yourself in the actuality of love and love’s activity.

Mutual Love in Community

• When love is passionate, creative, and life giving, it is fulfilling and nurturing of all involved in it.

• Mutual love both transforms us and calls us to the deep intimacy of a shared life and a responsible commitment for both the present and the future.

• The task of the lover is to be an agent of healing at every level by becoming passionate and vowing fidelity to concrete relationships, persons, institutions, and places.

“God is Love and Love is God” (Ernest Holmes)

Go deeply inside your humanity and experience the transcendent

power within you.

Everything that you are, touch, and see came from the unconditional love of stars that bestowed the elements and compounds of Earth during hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary preparation to make the one-of-a-

kind person you are.

The point of this presentation is to urge you to see yourself for the magnificent human being you are, the universe’s own self-reflection, to honor and appreciate

what has formed you, to feel and value your grandeur, to celebrate the tremendous beauty of life on Earth that

invites you to “live life to the fullest, love wastefully and be all you can be.” (John Shelby Spong)

“Namaste: I Honor the Divinity Within You”

Research Sources

Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth, San Francisco, Sierra Club Books, 1988.

Theodosius Dobshansky, Mankind Evolving: the Evolution of the Human Species, Yale University Press, 1962.

Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind, A Philosophy, A Faith, A Way of Life, New York, Penguin-Putnam, 1938.

L. Robert Keck, Sacred Quest: The Evolution and Future of the Human Soul, West Chester, PA, Chrysalis Books, 2000.

John Shelby Spong, Eternal Life: A New Vision, New York, Harper Collins, 2009.

Brian Swimme, The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos, New York, Orbis Books, 1996.

Brian Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, Santa Fe, Bear & Co. 1984.

Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era, Harper San Francisco 1992.

Cletus Wessels, Jesus in the New Universe Story, New York, Orbis Books, 2006.