I don’t know about you, but I love radio.
Growing up an orphan in a cold Canadian town, I warmed myself by the radio many, many lonely nights.
I thanked God for radio then, but I am a thousand-fold thankful today, when I see how easily the Evil among us has infected the internet, our smartphones, and TVs.
I spent just two years in an orphanage, but quickly became known as bookish, and a bit of a snoop. I managed to ferret out an astonishingly exotic work of literature: “The Future of Man,” by Teilhard De Chardin, which some Sister had heavily underlined and stashed under the stairs of the Rectory.
Teilhard De Chardin was a Jesuit priest, and such an original thinker, that to stay within the Order and the Church, he agreed his books would only be published after his death.
De Chardin predicted over 60 years ago that through evolution, humans would grow a new organ, a sphere of collective human consciousness and communication that would encircle the earth. He called it the NOOSPHERE. Today, we call it the Internet.
The Internet is a blessing. But today, this wondrous “thinking layer” that envelopes us, has become a storm cloud.
Our smart, internet connected devices are possessed by the Devil. Billions of devices are down and billions more are infected, giving no outward sign they are doing Satan’s work, but secretly serving botnets that are stealing funds and sensitive data from us, our families, our governments, our businesses.
All our Internet connected devices are feeding the Beast.
This is why, simultaneously with our Prayer at 7pm, I will ask what may seem the impossible. I will ask everyone, everywhere, to disconnect and power down.
We must starve this Beast of the energy and data he devours to survive.
We must, for a moment, take down the NOOSPHERE, our “thinking layer,” the Internet and reboot, reset.
I can sense your anxiety! We will be defenseless, with no ability to communicate!
But imagine for a moment, without any phone, tablet or TV screen to distract us, that we all pour our hearts and souls into prayer. And we pray that God’s love, and our love, will unite us in a circle -- a protective, and projective, sphere of love.
This, in fact, was what Teilhard de Chardin predicted as the next step in human evolution: that the Noosphere will be supplanted by a higher sphere, a Sphere of Love enveloping the earth, and bringing us closer to God.
Teilhard said, “The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.”
And he said, “Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.”
Let us take the next step in our evolution, tonight at 7pm, by endeavoring to unite and encompass this Earth in loving prayer.
We do not need text or email or Skype to reach God, or to reach our fellow humans.
I suggest, where possible, gather with your loved ones, gather with your friends, your colleagues. Let us gather we each other and let us know prayer, let us know hope, let us know love, let us know God.
De Chardin said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
It is time for us as spiritual beings to at last do what we were put on Earth to do: to transmit Love. Let us reach out to each other, reach out to God, and pray with every fiber of our beings, forming a Sphere of Love around this blessed Earth.
Until then, may God bless us all.