The context within which the Engaging Impasse process emerged reflects the insights of the New Universe Story. Many of the women who have participated in the Circles are aware of and are integrating the insights from the New Story into their lives. For some it is shaping a new or re-energized spirituality. Margaret Galiardi, OP and Rose Mary Meyer, BVM are two such women.

In their reflective essay in Crucible for Change: Engaging Impasse through Communal Contemplation and Dialogue, they continue the dialogue that began in their Circle so as to deepen their insights and offer them to a broader audience. Their conversation witnesses to their ever-deepening journey through the New Cosmology.

Here is a segment of their conversation for your own reflection.

Rose Mary: … Contemplation clears the cobwebs catching the prey of negative energy and discouragement that impasse can so often bring. It helps me to hold the positive energy and courage you spoke about which I agree was so evident in the stories of impasse our group shared. It is contemplation that frees me to live with the questions, the paradoxes, the mysteries rather than focusing on the necessity of ‘solving impasse.’ The gift of communal contemplation, which was so much a part of the program, really made me much more aware of the cosmic impact of positive energy as a power to engage impasse.

Margaret: I am really fascinated, Rose Mary, by your use of the phrase ‘the cosmic impact of positive energy.’ Ours is an era when the longer and larger cosmic story opens up whole new arenas for reflection, certainly regarding impasse, but also in other arenas. This had a powerful impact on me when the war in Iraq juxtaposed itself between our first and second circle gatherings. Like others in our group, I was sickened by the political rhetoric leading to the war. …

Shortly before the actual invasion, Nancy Sylvester, IHM wrote on our Circle’s electronic message board: ‘How are you holding [the possible war in Iraq] in a contemplative way? What are you learning when you engage this impasse in prayer?’ I wrote in response:

This morning I was reflecting on what happens when I place the imminent war in Iraq within the larger 13-billion-year universe story. In the very act of doing this, the realization opens that there is a larger universal wisdom and intelligence which when faced with crises more than once in the multi-billion year unfolding, transformed again and again. This happened not without mass extinctions, and what appears from the perspective of puny human intelligence to be an incredible waste of life. Yet we do know empirically that nothing is ever really lost in the compassionate embrace of the larger story.

This was no facile response on my part. I clung at this point by the skin of my teeth to the larger universe story and the much bigger God I had discovered through it. (pp 87-89)

(From “Be-ing in the Universe” Margaret Galiardi, OP and Rose Mary Meyer, BVM , pp 81-95 in Crucible for Change: Engaging Impasse through Communal Contemplation and Dialogue)

Questions for Reflection
What role does the New Cosmology/New Universe Story play in your own life – your own spirituality?

Have you ever let contemplation fill you with ‘positive energy’ as Rose Mary speaks of?

Have you ever tried to imagine the 13-billion-year ‘longer and larger cosmic story’ of the universe as Margaret suggests? Where does your imagining take you?

What impasses in your life do you feel might be opened to new insights as your understanding of the New Universe Story deepens?

Like Margaret, have you discovered a ‘bigger God’ in the midst of this New Story? Who or what is the nature of the ‘bigger God’ you may have discovered there?

Take a few minutes to enter into ‘conversation’ with Rose Mary and Margaret. You may wish to write your own reflection on one or more of the questions that speak especially to you – to your own experience of the New Universe Story – to your own developing spirituality.

You may send your reflection to circles@engagingimpasse.org. If you wish to give us permission, a part of your reflection may be incorporated into a future Book Club entry.

Written by Mary Jo Klick

© Institute for Communal Contemplation and Dialogue 2003-2006
Reprint with permission circles@engagingimpasse.org

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