“It is almost a commonplace today to find men and women who, quite naturally and unaffectedly, live in the explicit consciousness of being an atom or a citizen of the universe.”
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Divine Milieu. Translated by Siôn Cowell. Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2012, p. 1. [Teilhard had finished this manuscript back in 1927!]
from a prayer within the text: “When the signs of age begin to mark my body (and still more my mind); when the ill that is to diminish or carry me off strikes from without or is born within me; when the painful moment comes in which I suddenly awaken to the fact that I am ill or growing old; and above all at the last moment when I feel I am losing hold of myself and am absolutely passive in the hands of the great unknown energies that have formed me; in all those dark moments, O God, grant that I may understand that it is you (provided only my faith is strong enough) who are painfully parting the fiber of my being to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and bear me away within yourself.”
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Divine Milieu. Translated by Siôn Cowell. Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2012, pp. 50-51.
Pathology: the Study of a Path 