b'connected to the dynamic, unfolding universe. 1Teilhard felt that if we dont sense this connection, we lose our way and our purpose for living. In his words,Humans have every right to be anxious about their fate so long as they feel themselves to be lost and lonely in the midst of the mass of created things. For it will denote in them not a critical sense but a malady of the spirit if they were doubtful of the value and the hopes of an entire world. But let them once discover that their fate is bound up with the fate of nature itself and immediately, joyously, they will begin again their forward march. 2Teilhards thinking about evolution led to his critique of the biblical Genesis story asIn Laudato si,Pope Francis draws on explanatory of evolution. Teilhard exploredthe same notion to describe a dynamic ideas describing cosmogenesis, namely,cosmological and ecological relationship an emerging universe expressing ever- between humans and, indeed, all life:new patternings of spirit-matter. When an early writing developing these ideas wasAs part of the universe, called into submitted to conservative Vatican offi cials,being by one Father, all of us are linked Teilhard was urged to leave France forby unseen bonds and together form research in China in the early 1920s. Thisa kind of universal family, a sublime absence of tolerance for his cosmologicalcommunion which fi lls us with a sacred, thought led to his sustained exile fromaffectionate, and humble respect.Europe to China beginning in the lateGod has joined us so closely to the 1920s. Teilhards ideas were neverthelessworld around us that we can feel the infl uential, and of particular import isdesertifi cation of the soil almost as a Teilhards understanding of the humanphysical ailment, and the extinction of a phenomenon as arising from and deeplyspecies as a painful disfi gurement. (LS 89)20 AspireVolume 1//Winter 2020 Subscribe today!smp.org/aspire'