And in this first basic vision we begin to see how the king- dom of God and the cosmic love may be reconciled: the bosom of Mother Earth is in some way the bosom of God.
We are not, however, simply nurslings rocked and suckled by Mother Earth. Like children who have grown up, we must learn to walk by ourselves and give active help to the mother who bore us. If, then, we make up our minds to accept whole- heartedly the manifestations of the divine will registered in the laws of nature, our obedience must make us throw ourselves into positive effort, our cult of passivities must ultimately be transformed into a passion for work. What, we now see, we have to do is not simply to forward a human task but, in some way, to bring Christ to completion; we must, therefore, devote ourselves with still more ardor, even in the natural domain, to the cultivation of the world…
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "Cosmic Life" in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Writings, selected by Ursula King
