This year’s Summer Institute at The Well will be lead by Gail Worcelo, SMG. A champion for the teachings of Thomas Berry and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Gail is a former Passionist Nun who was taught by Thomas Berry during her novitiate in 1984. She continued the journey with Thomas and, with his support and guidance, co-founded Green Mountain Monastery and the Thomas Berry Sanctuary in Vermont. The Monastery for the 21st century is dedicated to the Great Work of both inner and outer Awakening.

If you are not familiar with Gail and her work this post provides a glimpse into the scope of her life view and the place we each hold in the universe as pure love energy. Below you will find a brief video about the founding of the Green Mountain Monastery and two articles she wrote for The Well’s Spirit Earth publication.

Voices for a New Consciousness
by Gail Worcelo, SMG

I remember screaming at the top of my lungs, “WE’RE MOVING! WE’RE MOVING!” as the Staten Island Ferry pulled away from the dock in the New York harbor. It was June 1963, and my six-year old voice joined the high- pitched cacophony of the other children. We were leaning over the railing of a boat on our way to Rye Playland, an amusement park whose mascot and iconic attraction was a giant wooden roller coaster called “The Dragon,” boasting a dizzying height of 85 feet at its peak. It was our end-of-the-year school trip.

Little did I realize that the words I shouted as the ferry launched out into the Hudson River were the same ones captured in a passage by the late French Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin in his collection of essays, The Future of Man, summing up the evolutionary spirit of our age. The conflict dates from the day when one man, flying in the face of appearance, perceived that the forces of nature are no more unalterably fixed in their orbits than the stars themselves, but that their serene arrangement around us depicts the flow of a tremendous tide–that day a voice rang out, crying to Mankind peacefully slumbering on the raft of Earth, “We are moving! We are going forward!” It is a dramatic spectacle, that of Mankind divided to its very depths into two irrevocably opposed camps—one looking toward the horizon and proclaiming with all its newfound faith, “We are moving,” and the other, without shifting its position, obstinately maintaining, “Nothing changes. We are not moving at all.” (The Future of Man)

We are moving. We are going somewhere. I keep coming back to this fundamental insight that has been dawning on our awareness over the past 20 years as we come to understand ourselves as part of a vast unfolding universe. This slow—yet undeniable revelation—affects not only how we see the cosmos but how we understand ourselves and the future of humanity in the 21st century.

My mentor, the late Passionist priest and cultural historian, Thomas Berry, pointed out that not only are we moving but moving towards deeper expressions of wholeness, unity, relationality, and love. “Evolution” he once said, “is an internal as well as external event; it is not just the outer world that is moving but the deep interior as well.”

Most of us think of evolution as something happening “out there” in the cosmos, but this process is also happening in and between us as the expressions of relationality, unity, wholeness, and love. “Creative Unions” have been forged throughout the entire evolutionary journey. In our time and at this level of universe complexity, WE are the new “Creative Union,” forging a “Higher We” with unprecedented potential for a new order of human relatednesss.

We can no longer deny our profound connection to each other. I belong to a group of spiritually adventurous men and women from around the world called the Evolutionary Collective. Together we are exploring the emerging edge of consciousness within the powerful relational Field of mutual influence and commitment. We are giving ourselves wholeheartedly to the most powerful emergence of consciousness and Creative Union possible. We realize that the capacities for higher relating, once stabilized as structures in consciousness, will start to change the world because the evolution of consciousness and the evolution of culture are inextricably linked. The Evolutionary Collective is a co-creative Field of consciousness that calls out the best and highest in everyone for the sake of the Whole.

I think Teilhard de Chardin sums up our experience in these words: “There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe.”

Published originally in SpiritEarth, Spring 2013.

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His Shoes
by Gail Worcelo, SGM

It was his pair of black shoes sitting in the corner of his room that caught my attention. I had just arrived for a visit at Well-Spring and Thomas was sitting in his chair, blanket wrapped around his shoulders, with a big welcoming smile to greet me. I walked over to him and we gave each other a long, tight hug.

“Pull up a chair,” Thomas said, “and face me.”

“There you have it,” I thought. “What else would he say to me after all of these years of bonded intimacy, of teaching and loving, laughing and learning?”

“Face me.”

These are the words of a Wisdom Master to his student in the waning years of his life. I could barely heed the request because of the extraordinary demand inherent in it.

To distract myself from the monumental task of honoring his request, I allowed my eyes to glance quickly back to his black shoes, stretched and scuffed in the corner. They were like two eyes, witnessing this moment, peering out from their vantage point in the room.

I knew these shoes well and the man who had filled them during so many walks and talks, dinners and visits.

I remember one particular time when Thomas came to visit us in Vermont during Mud Season. It was the month of March and we took him to our Benedictine neighbors, the Monks of Weston Priory to give a lecture. Thomas spoke on the theme of “Stabilitas”—stability, not in terms of the traditional monastic understanding of staying in place, but in a much more challenging frame. He spoke of stabilizing consciousness, of understanding ourselves in a new way as Universe beings and placing ourselves back into the Universe in this Ecozoic Era.

On our way back to the car, we had to slosh our way through the muddy road. Once inside our own house, I recall bending low, washing off the mud that had embedded itself on Thomas’s shoes. It was a significant gesture for me, one of humility and gratitude, a reminder of the great gift I have received in this relationship of sitting for so many years at the feet of such a great teacher. At the same time I was metaphorically clearing away my own internal muddiness through Thomas’s guidance.

Another time, Thomas and I went out to dinner at the Green Valley Grill and Thomas ordered wine for both of us. The waitress came to the table with a glass of merlot and basket of bread.

Thomas took the taste test and then passed the glass across the table to me. I tasted too. We looked at each other and both agreed, “Good wine.” The waitress left to get us a bottle.

Then Thomas broke a piece of bread and passed the basket to me. I took a piece of bread and ate. In that moment the impact of Eucharist became a staggering reality. We had been talking all day about the Universe Story and now here it was, 13.7 billion years of it gathered in this gesture, without dualism or separation. I experienced a momentary sense of spiritual vertigo and when I looked down, there were his black shoes steady on the floor under the table.

Although only a few seconds had passed in recalling these two memories, the shoes still held my attention. I blinked, then pulled up a chair to face Thomas.

“There is so much more I want to say to you,” Thomas said.

“It is too bad you do not live closer so we could meet each week.”

“I will come back in a month,” I replied.

“Good,” he responded.

But we both knew that THIS was the moment of reckoning, the moment of grace. We faced into each other, our eyes locked, all boundaries blurred. It was clear we would be eternally fused in soul and spirit, that our years together had forged a unique intimacy between us and that death would be but a veil.

Thomas said, “Do you have what you need now?”

I said, “Yes.”

“Good,” Thomas said. “Then get me my shoes over there in the corner, we need to be on our way.

I walked over to the shoes, picked them up and helped Thomas get his feet into them. Once in his wheel chair, we made our way over to the Well-Spring dining room where we met Thomas’s sister for lunch.

Published originally in SpiritEarth, August 2014.