Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a visionary French Jesuit, paleontologist, biologist, and philosopher, spent much of his life trying to integrate religious experience with natural science. He became enthralled with the possibilities for humankind and suggested that the Earth in its evolutionary unfolding, was growing a new organ of consciousness, called the noosphere, a "planetary thinking network". 

Teilhard describes the natural root and stages of his spiritual growth in terms of five concentric circles. These circles are his stepping stones into an ever deepening mystical life. They plot his growth and development as he spirals ever more deeply into the heart of matter where he eventually finds himself within the very heart of God. Sister Kathleen Duffy will share with you Teilhard’s mystical journey through the first of these circles where he opened himself to the Divine Presence that permeates our world.