Out-of-the-box thinking

Steve's funeral is tomorrow and as I have been giving thanks for him I remember his penchant for reading unusually solid books that pushed the envelope.  And I think he inherited this ability from my father. This came to mind in my devotional reading last night. In a section  'A time to Die' there was a prayer written by Teilhard de Chardin, a controversial French Jesuit priest who combined science, philosophy and theology in provocative ways.  One of his famous quotes runs: We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.  As you might guess my father engaged with his writing and I remember as a teenager hearing him speak of a disastrous ministers' meeting when he tried to introduce some of de Chardin's ideas to the group. I don't think it did his reputation any good (not that he would have been bothered).  Anyway, the quote I read last night:

Now that I have found the joy of utilizing all forms of growth to make you, or let you, O God, grow in me, grant that I may willingly consent to this last phase of communion in the course of which I shall possess you by diminishing in you.....

When the signs of age begin to mark my body (and still more when they touch my mind); when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off strikes from without or is born within me; when the painful moment comes in which I suddenly awaken to the fact that I am ill or growing old; and above all at that last moment when I feel I am losing hold of myself and am absolutely passive within the hands of the great unknown forces that have formed me; in all those dark moments, O God, grant that I may understand that it is you who are painfully parting the fibres of my being in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and bear me away within yourself.

The more the future opens before me like some dizzy abyss or dark tunnel, the more confident I may be - if I venture forwards on the strength of your word - of losing myself and surrendering myself in you, of being assimilated by your body, Jesus. Teach me to treat my death as an act of communion. 

Not a superficial prayer.  I think my father and brother would have appreciated it!