Fall Back
Cosmic Story
November 5, 2021
Science of Mind
“I open my self to this time and place made holy by my contemplation. I open my heart, my mind and my very being to be present to that vast and amazing cosmic story which is still being told, a conclusion that is not yet known but continues to reveal itself in all of its creation.
I contemplate this Living Presence, and I view this vase arc of goodness, truth and beauty that my eyes behold. My very being is filled with the wonder and awe of Its glory.
I am aware of that life, of that mind which in the mind of Christ Consciousness, I am aware that that life is my life and my mind now, and from this place, I speak my word. The word that I speak is peace. The peace that heals, restores and reconciles my life to all life. The peace that diffuses any perception of illusion of separation from myself or anyone or anything. I allow myself to be grounded in the experience of the peace, this beauty, this goodness that avails itself to each of us now.
I am aware that we are all a center of divine consciousness in this act whole. I know that each of us is family to our home —our mother, the Earth.[Gaia] I know this Presence was there at the beginning of all things. It is the Presence that sustains all things. It is the Presence that makes all things new. It is the Christ consciousness that incarnates in all creation.
This presence, the Christ consciousness, calls forth in each of us that which is good and noble. It is this Presence that invites each of us to co-create a world that is just, equitable and sustainable of all life, a world that words for all creation.
And so even now, as light gives way to darkness, I know that once again light is born from darkness. And so I am filled with gratefulness for light that gives us warmth, that guides us and renews us. Naming it good, I call it forth by saying may it be so.”
Daniel P. Scheid
The cosmic common good provides a larger moral perspective, but it also exhorts us to “sink our roots deeper” into our native place and to work for the good of our place on Earth. The cosmic common good enjoins us to adopt and intensify the many Earth-oriented personal daily choices and movements for structural change with which we are already familiar, for example reducing consumption and energy use, eating less or no meat, minimizing our dependence on automobiles. . . .
Sinking our roots in our native place on this fertile Earth, but with the larger perspective of the cosmic common good, may we become like the righteous, “like a tree planted near streams of water, that yields its fruit in season,” whose “leaves never wither,” and that “whatever [we do] prospers” (Psalm 1:3–4). May the larger perspective of the cosmic common good inspire us to live and to work for the good of all members of this vast and wondrous cosmos:
for the poor, the vulnerable, and all those imperiled;
for the contexts in which creatures flourish, and for the greater wholes of
which they are a part;
for the order in creatures, by which they glorify the Creator;
for the good that creatures provide to other creatures;
for the good of the order of creatures, by which the cosmos is sustained;
for the emergent universe and the communion of subjects;
for the solidarity that binds us to all creatures;
for the promotion of justice for all creatures;
for the sacred that lies in the innermost being in all creatures;
for greater nonviolence and peace;
for the interdependence that shines like a jewel within all creatures;
for all of our relations above, below, and around us;
and for the land and this plot of Earth by which creatures come to discover
the cosmos at home.
Daniel P. Scheid, The Cosmic Common Good: Religious Grounds for Ecological Ethics(Oxford University Press: 2016), 181–182.