Back to the feminine influence on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, unusual for a priest in his era to acknowledge. The first woman to play a major role was Marguerite, Teilhard’s cousin and childhood playmate. She was a rarity for women then—a brilliant student at the Sorbonne University in Paris, who studied under the noted philosopher Henri Bergson. She was Teilhard’s confidante when he served as a stretcher-bearer during World War I, the first listener to his ideas, his first audience and critic. Since 1 million died at Verdun, his time at the battlefield gave him a compulsion to write, fearing he might not return. Teilhard’s biographer Ursula King says of Marguerite, “without her, he might not have survived the war as well as he did.”
After the war, Teilhard enjoyed the intellectual circles of Paris, his teaching and doctoral studies, but his struggles with authorities stripped him of the life he loved. Deeply disappointed, Teilhard was exiled to China—which would ironically become a time of stimulation and flowering. International circles of scientists there transcended national and religious backgrounds; his field research led to the discovery of Peking man, a “perfect proof of evolution.” And he met Lucile Swan, a recently divorced North American sculptor.
They loved each other deeply; their relationship enriched what he called “our” work. Her influence broadened and deepened him. Lucile didn’t share Teilhard’s beliefs, so he stretched and expanded as he tried to articulate for her. She described him as alive and joyful, writing, “his ‘credo’… seems to me the best expression of a faith that I have yet found.” She found church censorship baffling: “his beliefs are so sane, intelligent and appealing to the world of today—which needs and longs for the very thing that he has to give.” She couldn’t understand his fidelity to the Jesuits, and hoped they’d kick him out so the couple could have a more “normal” relationship. He wrote her that his “internal evolution [has been] deeply impressed by you,” and felt lost after leaving Peking when they could no longer have their daily tea together. Teilhard promised Lucile that their love was forever, and perhaps its effects live on in his books.
Their relationship would change over time, but Lucile was one of the ten people at his funeral in New York City. After the communist takeover in China, he was exiled to the US, forbidden to return to his beloved France. He who wrote eloquently of the divine milieu was robbed of his own milieu. Sadly, this creative scholar and mystic was curtly informed, “No lectures. No publishing. Stick to Science.” Such a boycott led Teilhard to question himself, “has the vision been a mirage?”
Miraculously he maintained his astonishment at the juice of life. His biographer Kathleen Duffy writes in Teilhard’s Mysticism that “something as simple as a song or sunbeam would…heighten his awareness of an unexplainable presence.”(23) In a letter to the Father General trying to explain where he stood, Teilhard wrote, “what might’ve been taken as obstinacy or disrespect is simply the result of my absolute inability to contain my own feeling of wonderment.” Even at the end he was dazzled by beauty; one of his favorite words was “sap,” for the divine energy welling up through appearances. And to their credit, the Jesuits have done a complete turn-around; they are among the sponsors of the documentary streaming for two years on PBS and website, https://www.teilhardproject.com.
Kathy Coffey 