November Interview: Harnessing Love In Changing And Challenging Times
An interview with ILIA DELIO
In this month’s interview Brie Stoner asks Ilia Delio for her thoughts on the transformative potential of love as we navigate through challenging times and the increasing complexity of a technology-based information culture. In the context of the divisive election results in the US, Ilia underscores the importance of rooting our responses in the depths of an inward, contemplative consciousness. She reminds us that only through the breaking down of the established order can something new arise, and that reaching out to others, staying connected, and remaining hopeful is essential as we face toward the future.
“I think this is something we can all practice: in a techno-saturated age every available moment we have to love another person, to say hello, to see their good, to attend to them… just to recognize them, is the beginning of a relational world.”
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So wonderful to discover this here and now. We live as lay missioners in a small indigenous village in Oaxaca, Mexico. Creative caos is a reality already working in society here. As we watch the very changed weather come over the hills to our little ranch it is becoming the strongest metaphor or even more concretely the expression of this rapid evolution that confronts us now. In my contemplative prayer the answer to the physical shock I have been feeling at all the social and political change here and now in the states seems to be…this is going to deepen and so must you. When Ilia talked about the power of the membering in the liturgy, I felt a great sense of connection…the kind I feel taking the Eucharist to the sick. We do have the power to connect with one another and distance doesn’t diminish it. All service will touch us all and one way or another our collaboration with the great coming to be, will beat its fruit in due season. Thank you
As I was listening to this dialog, I encountered again the image of a vortex (c. 34:00) set in a brief consideration of chaos theory as applied to post election trauma: “what is the silent attractor here, the strange attractor, the silent hidden basin of attraction that is actually quietly at work through all this disorder?”.
The phrase “basin of attraction” turns out to be a technical term in biology and systems theory as well as chaos theory. I like the fluid dynamics implied in all of these contexts. I’d like to entertain that perhaps all cases are connected, as wave, to a black “whole” at the center of creation… Perhaps love indeed, “the zest for life”, is the ultimate cosmic attractor.