In the first week of June 2024, I met with seven other RNDM Sisters, to reflect together on the “new cosmology”, and its implications for our life and mission.
The catalyst for this seminar was My Dung Nguyen, a woman who became an RNDM Postulant in April 2023, and who, having now completed her postulancy in Winnipeg, will depart Canada on June 18, to begin a two-year novitiate in Vietnam.
Read about My Dung’s Reception as an RNDM postulant
I was moved by this request, and by the Sisters who were keen to form a learning community around My Dung as she transitions from the first step of her RNDM journey to the next. I was grateful that Sr. Marilyn LeBlanc agreed to work with me and present her collected images from Sr. Mary Southard, as another way of telling the story of the universe.1
Mary Southard, CSJ, Tells the Universe Story Exquisitely Through Art
This “new story”, as revealed through science, is an “origins story”, that takes its place alongside the stories in the Hebrew Scriptures, and in multitudes of world-wide accounts formulated by humans since our ancestors first gathered around fires and asked questions like: Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we going? What is the purpose of our lives?
I was pleasantly surprised when, several days after we finished our time together, the Sister-participants put together a document describing something of their learnings, to share with the other RNDMs in Canada. That document is now in the “Our Newsletters” section of this website, and you can read it here: Reflections on Cosmology
I was impressed with their document, and the multiple contours of the story that they are apprehending after a “first encounter” with this new information. So I decided to share a bit of my own experience in today’s Blog, and asked if I might link it to their written account.
My own interest in how the emerging insights of science could illuminate faith, came in the mid-60s, when I was a novice, and was introduced to the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. De Chardin’s keen appreciation of the revelatory power of matter, struck a chord deep within me. His belief that humankind is evolving, mentally, emotionally, and socially, toward an ultimate final spiritual unity (that he called the Omega point) gave new purpose and meaning to my life.
Some twenty years later, my consciousness was shaped further when I was introduced to the “new cosmology”, as articulated through the work of Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, and Mathew Fox. The insights that have come to me through their writings and recorded talks, have been a source of grounded hope.
In my quest for understanding and my desire to be shaped by this new story, I have experienced moments of exhilaration and perplexity, as I have caught glimpses of this new understanding, and then lost that clarity, then found it again, and again, and again …. The huge story of the unfolding universe is the story of a journey, as is my understanding of this unfolding.
Over the course of our seminar, I was inspired by the connections the Sisters made with one another and with the material we were using as we explored dimensions of the evolving universe, and of ourselves as the universe still evolving today.
Veronica Dunne is a Sister of our Lady of the Missions (RNDM), who has primarily worked as an educator and counsellor in institutional and community based settings in Canada. She has also served with the RNDMs outside of Canada in Senegal, Peru, and Aotearoa New Zealand.
A 2002 Doctor of Ministry graduate from the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto School of Theology at the University of Toronto, she subsequently served as director of the Doctor of Ministry program at St. Stephen’s College at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Her current research interests are in eco-theology and cosmology, and their intersections with indigenous cosmologies and spiritualties.
She presently serves on the RNDM leadership team in Canada.
