Year: 2025

Plasma, Consciousness, and the Phenomenological Cosmos: Relational Fields

Most of the visible universe is not solid, liquid, or gas. Instead, it is plasma, an electrified, dynamic, relational medium that shapes stars, nebulae, auroras, and the vast glowing threads between galaxies. Plasma is not a passive substance but a field that responds, organizes, circulates, and transforms, as far as we understand it, according to the classical model of physics (having been a Physics and AP Physics teacher for years). When physicists describe plasma, they speak of currents, waves, resonances, and instabilities with terms that sound far closer to phenomenology’s language of relations than to the inert mechanics of early modern science.

Phenomenology, from Husserl to Stein to Heidegger to Merleau-Ponty, begins by refusing the notion that consciousness (which is tricky to define but something like our shaping of reality) sits apart from the world. Consciousness is always intentional, always directed toward something beyond itself (Husserl, 85). Stein emphasizes that consciousness is constituted through relational openness, such as through empathy, the capacity to be affected by the presence of another (Stein, 11). Merleau-Ponty pushes this further, describing perception as an intertwining of body and world within the “flesh” of existence, a shared field of becoming that precedes the division of subject and object (Merleau-Ponty, 130).

When one considers notions of plasma “behavior,” a seemingly strange similarity emerges. Plasma does not conform to the common image of matter as composed of isolated particles. It behaves more like a responsive, relational field. Electrical and magnetic contexts shape plasma’s identity, its form emerging from interactions. To say this is not to personify plasma, but to acknowledge that the universe described by contemporary physics is one in which relationality, emergence, and responsiveness are perhaps fundamental if plasma is the fundamental “type” of matter that is overwhelmingly the majority of the universe (which it is from our current models). Consciousness, in such a universe, no longer appears as an inexplicable anomaly but as a deepening of tendencies already present in the world’s energetic fabric.

However, this relational vision isn’t confined to the heavens. The Earth itself participates in plasma dynamics through its magnetosphere, ionosphere, lightning networks, and auroral currents, and through its relationship with our closest star (and all stars). The sky where we see these interactions shapes each night. Auroras, for example, are not merely beautiful displays but expressions of the Earth’s magnetic and electrical relationship with the Sun’s plasma wind. They are atmospheric conversations between solar particles spiraling along magnetic field lines, stirring oxygen and nitrogen into light. Standing beneath an aurora is not simply observing a spectacle (though they are spectacles to us humans!), but it is participating in a planetary form of responsiveness.

Even the ordinary sky carries traces of these deeper dynamics. Sunlight reaching the Earth is itself plasma-born radiation, the result of fusion in the Sun’s core and the turbulent churning of its convective zones. Weather patterns arise within atmospheric layers charged by solar energy. The glow of dawn, the heaviness before a storm, the electric tension in the air before lightning. All of these reflect the relational surface where cosmic plasma meets terrestrial life.

Phenomenology urges us to attend to these atmospheric experiences not as mere background but as encounters that shape our consciousness. When Merleau-Ponty writes that the perceiver “belongs to the world it perceives” (Merleau-Ponty, 240), he is naming something observable in every sensory moment under the open sky. The warmth of sunlight on skin, the shifting hues of clouds, the pulse of wind through trees… all of these are participatory events. Consciousness perhaps forms as our bodies respond to them, open to them, and in that openness.

This sense of relational becoming aligns with ancient Christian cosmologies. Gregory of Nyssa imagined creation as a ceaseless movement from potentiality into greater participation in divine life (Gregory of Nyssa, 98). For Maximus the Confessor, all creatures are logoi, expressions of the Word that holds all things in coherence (Maximus, 131). Pseudo-Dionysius described the universe as a circulation of divine energy, an endless procession and return (Pseudo-Dionysius, 71). These early thinkers saw creation as dynamic, relational, and alive. This is a vision that fits comfortably alongside a universe constituted primarily by plasma’s flowing, radiant fields.

Hildegard of Bingen’s luminous theology captures this beautifully. She writes that “all living creatures are sparks from the radiation of God’s brilliance” (Hildegard, 47). Her medieval metaphor gains unexpected literal resonance when we recognize that the light that feeds the Earth, stirs photosynthesis, warms our skin, and shapes our perception arises from the Sun’s plasma interactions. The very energy that animates life emerges from cosmic relationality.

Incarnation, too, becomes newly vivid under this cosmological horizon. When John proclaims that the Logos became flesh, he is not announcing a divine intrusion into inert matter but the intensification of a relational cosmos capable of perceiving itself. Augustine’s confession that God is “more inward to me than my inmost self” (Augustine, 3.6.11) as recognition that consciousness is not separate from divine relationality but its inward flowering. Consciousness becomes the universe articulating one of its own possibilities from within.

This reframing carries practical ecological and spiritual implications. If consciousness arises from relational fields, then ecological destruction is not merely environmental loss. Ecological destruction is a diminishment of the world’s capacity for relational becoming. Every time we attend to the sky, the wind, the rain patterns, or the shifting seasons of a single walnut tree, we participate in the world’s own consciousness-forming dynamics. Ecological attention is thus not merely observational. It is devotional. It is a mode of participating in the relational depth of reality.

To think plasma and consciousness phenomenologically is to embrace a universe that is dynamic, alive, and expressive from the cosmic to the atmospheric to the intimate scale of daily life. The sky above us, the weather around us, the tree in the backyard… all of these are expressions of relational becoming. Consciousness is not the exception but the refinement of this process. Theology becomes cosmology. Spirituality becomes ecological. And phenomenology becomes the practice of learning to perceive the world as the radiant, relational field it already is.

  • Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. Oxford University Press, 1991.
  • Gregory of Nyssa. On the Soul and Resurrection. In The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 58. Catholic University of America Press, 1977.
  • Hildegard of Bingen. Scivias. Translated by Columba Hart and Jane Bishop. Paulist Press, 1990.
  • Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated by F. Kersten. Springer, 1982.
  • Maximus the Confessor. On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua. Translated by Nicholas Constas. Harvard University Press, 2014.
  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. Routledge, 2012.
  • Pseudo-Dionysius. The Divine Names and the Mystical Theology. Translated by C. E. Rolt. SPCK, 1920.
  • Stein, Edith. On the Problem of Empathy. Translated by Waltraut Stein. ICS Publications, 1989.
  • Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Phenomenon of Man. Harper Perennial, 1959.
  • Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality. Corrected Edition. Free Press, 1979.

Edith Stein’s The Science of the Cross

I occasionally get asked about my PhD work and why Edith Stein‘s The Science of the Cross (good article here) is such a big factor in my own thinking and research. I wanted to put together a quick overview of this incredibly important but under-read work.

Edith Stein’s Science of the Cross has become essential for my own work on The Ecology of the Cross because Stein refuses to treat the Cross as a mere doctrinal moment or as raw suffering. Instead, she approaches it as a structure of perception, a way of knowing and inhabiting the real. When she calls it a science, she means that the Cross forms a disciplined way of seeing or something that takes root inside a person like a seed and slowly reshapes how they relate to the world (p. xxvi). Reading Stein in this way helped me name what I’ve been experiencing in my own project in that cruciform consciousness isn’t just theological; it’s ecological. It’s a way of perceiving the world that emerges from relationship, participation, and transformation rather than abstraction. Her work gave me language for something I had long sensed, that the Cross can reorient the self toward the world with deeper attentiveness, humility, and openness.

Stein’s use of the word science (scientia crucis) matters profoundly for what I’m trying to do. She draws on the older meaning of science as a structured, coherent way of knowing something by touching its deepest causes. For her, the Cross reveals the underlying logic of both divine life and creaturely life as self-giving, relational, purifying, and transformative. It’s not empirical science, but it is a rigorous epistemology grounded in lived experience. That’s exactly what I’m arguing in The Ecology of the Cross in many ways in that ecological knowledge doesn’t come from standing outside the world analyzing it, but through being reshaped from within by relationship with the more-than-human world, by suffering, by transformation, by love. Stein opens up a historical and theological precedent for treating the Cross as a way of inquiry, a kind of sacred method for understanding God, ourselves, and the world we’re embedded in.

Finally, Stein gives me a way to talk about ecological transformation that isn’t sentimental or merely moralistic. She shows how the deepest change happens through what she calls “purification” as the dark night, surrender, unknowing, relinquishing our false control. That maps almost perfectly onto the ecological humility I keep returning to in my work: letting go of the fantasy of dominance, learning to be taught by the land, and allowing ourselves to be re-formed through relationship. Just as Stein insists we can only understand spirit by beginning with God, I’ve come to see that we can only understand ecological being by beginning with relationship as cruciform, interdependent, participatory. Her synthesis of mystical theology and phenomenology shows that the Cross isn’t an ending but a pattern of relational transformation. And that pattern sits right at the heart of my own work: a cruciform way of perceiving the world that opens space for renewal, kinship, and communion with the more-than-human world.

Edith Stein’s Science of the Cross reads as the convergence of two lives: the life of St. John of the Cross and Stein’s own quiet journey into the heart of the mystery she is interpreting. She begins by tracing John’s early poverty and suffering, showing how the message of the Cross shaped his interior life from childhood onward. For John, Stein emphasizes, the Cross is not merely an idea or symbol; it becomes the atmosphere of his entire being and the ground from which his mystical writings arise.

From this biographical foundation, Stein shifts the reader toward John’s central symbolic language. While the Cross is the historical form of divine love, the symbol John uses most consistently is the Night. The Night expresses the soul’s lived experience of purification with its surrender of attachments, illusions, and self-reliance. Stein explains how entering the Night is the inward enactment of taking up one’s Cross, a journey that touches the senses, the intellect, the imagination, and the will.

Stein then draws the reader into John’s account of the active spiritual life. Detachment becomes not an escape from the world but a clearing away of everything that keeps the soul from receiving God’s presence. Faith, hope, and love guide the soul through the Cross’s interior logic, shaping it for the more profound transformation to come.

The heart of the book lies in Stein’s treatment of the passive purifications, especially the dark night of the spirit. She describes these experiences with a clarity born of her own phenomenological and contemplative life. Dark contemplation, she insists, is not a void created by human effort but God’s own activity within the soul as a “mightier reality” that slowly re-forms the person in love. The darkness and dryness are signs not of absence but of presence beyond the reach of imagination.

As Stein moves toward John’s language of union, she broadens the discussion to reflect on the nature of spirit. Spirit, for Stein, is understood only in relation to God, who is its archetype. The human person becomes more itself by becoming more transparent to divine life. This process prepares the way for John’s poetic imagery in the Spiritual Canticle, where the union of the soul with God expresses itself in bridal language. Stein narrates this with reverence, showing how desire, longing, and surrender become the grammar of mystical intimacy.

In her final chapters, Stein recounts the end of John’s life in his misunderstandings, interior suffering, and death. These pages carry a particular poignancy because Stein herself was nearing her own martyrdom as she wrote them. Her voice throughout the work carries the quiet authority of someone who has already embraced the destiny her name implies. The Cross she describes is not theoretical but lived.

In the end, The Science of the Cross becomes a journey from biography to interiority, from symbol to lived transformation. It is Stein’s invitation to see the Cross as a form of knowledge, a path into union, and a way of inhabiting the world with clarity, compassion, and courage.

Science of the Cross Structural Outline

I. Introductory Material

Stein explains why she undertook the project during the 400th anniversary of St. John of the Cross and situates the book within both Carmelite history and her own vocation.

II. The Message of the Cross

John’s early life of poverty, hardship, and sensitivity to suffering becomes the foundation for his understanding of the Cross. Stein presents the Cross as the integrative symbol of his life.

III. The Cross and the Night

Stein distinguishes the Cross as Christ’s historical self-giving and the Night as the soul’s experiential path of purification. These symbols anchor the entire spiritual journey.

IV. Taking Up One’s Cross

The active dimension of John’s spirituality emerges here: detachment, virtue, training of the will, and the purification of desire. The Cross becomes a voluntary path.

V. Spirit, Faith, and the Limits of Natural Knowledge

Faith becomes the soul’s new organ of perception, moving it beyond what senses and intellect can grasp. Stein summarizes John’s insistence that one must relinquish natural knowing to receive divine light.

VI. Purification through Hope and Love

Stein unpacks John’s understanding of how hope purifies fear and despair, while love purifies the will and draws it toward divine conformity.

VII. Virtues, Gifts, and Graces

Human effort yields to divine initiative. The soul is supported by spiritual gifts and graces that deepen its capacity for surrender and interior freedom.

VIII. The Dawn of Contemplation

The soul’s own activity reaches its limit. Contemplation—God’s action—begins to shape the depths of the spirit. This transition prepares for the passive nights.

IX. The Passive Night and Dark Contemplation

Stein explains the dark night of the spirit as God’s direct purification. Dryness, darkness, and unknowing become the signs of transformation, not failure.

X. The Secret Ladder and the Nature of Spirit

John’s symbolic imagery becomes the doorway into Stein’s own philosophical reflection. She explores spirit, freedom, depth, and self-transparency to divine life.

XI. The Triune Mystery and Divine Light

The soul becomes increasingly receptive to the Trinity’s presence, described through radiance, hiddenness, and the deepening of participation in divine life.

XII. Bridal Imagery and the Hidden Life of Love

Stein walks through the Spiritual Canticle and its rich symbolism of longing, desire, intimacy, and surrender. Union becomes a harmony of wills.

XIII. The Bridal Symbol and the Cross

Mystical union is revealed as cruciform. The bridal imagery culminates at the Cross, where love shows its full reality through transformation and suffering.

XIV. Union in the Image of Christ Crucified

The soul becomes shaped in Christ’s likeness. This is the mature fruit of the journey: complete conformity to divine love.

XV. Spiritual Renunciation

Renunciation becomes not negation but freedom—total openness to divine action and participation in the life of God.

XVI. John’s Final Trials and Death

Stein narrates John’s last years and his final suffering. These pages form a mirror to her own calling, revealing the Cross as the culmination of a life given to God.

Edith Stein’s Letter to Pope Pius XI in 1933

Edith Stein (later St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross as a Carmelite nun) would eventually be killed in a gas chamber by the Nazi’s because of her Jewish heritage. Her letter to Pope Pius XI remains relevant and fresh today, with many societal and spiritual ills and injustices, with government structures and religious organizations remaining either silent or complicit as we approach 2026 and almost 100 years since Stein’s imploring epistle…

EDITH STEIN: “Letter to Pope Pius XI” (1933):

Holy Father!

As a child of the Jewish people who, by the grace of God, for the past eleven years has also been a child of the Catholic Church, I dare to speak to the Father of Christianity about that which oppresses millions of Germans. For weeks we have seen deeds perpetrated in Germany which mock any sense of justice and humanity, not to mention love of neighbor. For years the leaders of National Socialism have been preaching hatred of the Jews. Now that they have seized the power of government and armed their followers, among them proven criminal elements, this seed of hatred has germinated. The government has only recently admitted that ex- cesses have occurred. To what extent, we cannot tell, because public opinion is being gagged. However, judging by what I have learned from personal relations, it is in no way a matter of singular exceptional cases. Under pressure from reactions abroad, the government has turned to “milder” methods. It has issued the watchword “no Jew shall have even one hair on his head harmed.” But through boycott measures–by robbing people of their livelihood, civic honor and fatherland–it drives many to desperation; within the last week, through private reports I was informed of five cases of suicide as a consequence of these hostilities. I am convinced that this is a general condition which will claim many more victims. One may regret that these unhappy people do not have greater inner strength to bear their misfortune. But the responsibility must fall, after all, on those who brought them to this point and it also falls on those who keep silent in the face of such happenings.

Everything that happened and continues to happen on a daily basis originates with a government that calls itself “Christian.” For weeks not only Jews but also thousands of faithful Catholics in Germany, and, I believe, all over the world, have been waiting and hoping for the Church of Christ to raise its voice to put a stop to this abuse of Christ’s name. Is not this idolization of race and governmental power which is being pounded into the public consciousness by the radio open heresy? Isn’t the effort to destroy Jewish blood an abuse of the holiest humanity of our Savior, of the most blessed Virgin and the apostles? Is not all this diametrically opposed to the conduct of our Lord and Savior, who, even on the cross, still prayed for his persecutors? And isn’t this a black mark on the record of this Holy Year which was intended to be a year of peace and reconciliation.

We all, who are faithful children of the Church and who see the conditions in Germany with open eyes, fear the worst for the prestige of the Church, if the silence continues any longer. We are convinced that this silence will not be able in the long run to purchase peace with the present German government. For the time being, the fight against Catholicism will be conducted quietly and less brutally than against Jewry, but no less systematically. Before long no Catholic will be able to hold office in Germany unless he dedicates himself unconditionally to the new course of action.

At the feet of your Holiness, requesting your apostolic blessing,

(Signed) Dr. Edith Stein, Instructor at the German Institute for Scientific Pedagogy, Münster in Westphalia, Collegium Marianum.

Stargate Returns!

I’m very (very) excited about this news and can’t wait to see what the new series has in store for us… Stargate is one of those shows I’ve long clung to as a fan and loved the mythology since the original movie that I saw as a college kid way back in the ’90’s. Exciting times!

Stargate Returns! – Joseph Mallozzi’s Weblog:

Yes, it’s true.  14 years after the franchise aired its last episode (SGU’s “Gauntlet”), a new Stargate series has been greenlit by Amazon.  And it’s not a reboot or a wholesale reimagining that will wipe the slate clean on 17 seasons and some 350 hours of Stargate history.  It’s a new series that will be the perfect jumping-on point for first-time viewers while, at the same time, honoring the existing past.

Edith Stein and Laudato Si’: Recovering the Interior Life of Creation

Here’s a “study guide” and reflection to go along with these thoughts if you’re interested!

Most readers of Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ approach it as an ecological document. It is that, of course. It gives us the vocabulary of “integral ecology,” names the Cry of the Earth Cry of the Poor (Leo Boff), and pushes Christians to confront the ecological devastation happening right in our backyards. But reading it alongside one of my favorite thinkers, Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), has helped me see the encyclical in a deeper light. It is not only a call for ecological reform. It is a call for a renewed way of perceiving the world.

Stein, a phenomenologist and later a Carmelite nun, insists that the world discloses itself through relationship. We never encounter things as isolated objects. We encounter them as bearers of meaning whose inner life we sense through empathy. For Stein, empathy is not a poetic metaphor. It is a rigorous description of how consciousness crosses its boundaries to meet another being. It is how we come to understand the interiority of others without consuming or controlling them.

Laudato Si’ is animated by that same intuition. Pope Francis keeps returning to the idea that “everything is connected,” but what he is really describing is a spiritual and perceptual crisis. Our ecological wounds begin when our ways of seeing become fragmented. When we lose the felt sense that forests, rivers, neighborhoods, economies, and human bodies are interwoven, exploitation becomes easier and empathy becomes harder. Ecological conversion, in this sense, is a conversion of attention.

Stein helps here. She gives us the philosophical grounding for what Francis calls integral ecology. If empathy allows us to cross the boundary between self and other, then ecological empathy allows us to recognize the interior life of the more than human world. It opens the possibility that trees have presence, that watersheds have their own rhythm, that nonhuman creatures have ways of encountering God that do not depend on our interpretation. Francis gestures toward this when he speaks of creation as “a caress of God” that invites us to respond.

But integral ecology also requires a horizon. This is where the encyclical resonates with another thinker I have been returning to often in my doctoral work: John Haught. Haught argues that the universe is unfinished. Creation is still unfolding, still becoming, still drawn forward by promise. That future-oriented pull gives ecological ethics its energy. We act not only to preserve the past but to participate in the world’s future fulfillment.

When you place Stein and Haught in conversation with Francis, a striking picture emerges. Integral ecology is not simply an environmental policy or a social framework. It is a disciplined way of being present to the world. It asks us to hold the interiority of creation (Stein) together with the open-ended future of creation (Haught) inside a posture of hope and responsibility (Francis).

For me, this is where ecological intentionality takes shape. We learn to pay attention differently. We learn to sense the connections between the walnut tree in the backyard, the creek behind the subdivision, the groceries we buy, the digital tools we use, and the wider cosmic processes that made any of this possible. We begin to feel ourselves as participants in a living, relational world rather than spectators or managers.

Stein once wrote that empathy begins in stillness. Laudato Si’ suggests that ecological healing does too. When we slow down, when we listen, when we let the world address us rather than rushing to master it, we discover a deeper truth that has been present from the beginning. Creation is not a backdrop. It is a communion. And communion requires both interior attention and shared responsibility. That, I think, is the heart of what Pope Francis is trying to teach us.

If we take Stein seriously, and take Laudato Si’ seriously, then integral ecology is not a distant ideal. It is a practice of learning how to see.

More to read on these ideas:

Benedict XVI. Caritas in Veritate. Vatican Publishing House, 2009.

Deane-Drummond, Celia. “Joining in the Dance: Catholic Social Teaching and Ecology.” New Blackfriars 93, no. 1045 (2012): 193–212.

Francis. Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. Vatican Publishing House, 2015.

Gregersen, Niels Henrik. “Introduction.” In Incarnation: On the Scope and Depth of Christology, edited by Niels Henrik Gregersen, 1–21. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015.

Haught, John F. “The Unfinished Sacrament of Creation.” In Ecotheology: A Christian Conversation, edited by Kiara A. Jorgenson and Alan G. Padgett, 166–188. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020.

Johnson, Elizabeth A. “Jesus and the Cosmos: Soundings in Deep Christology.” In Incarnation: On the Scope and Depth of Christology, edited by Niels Henrik Gregersen, 133–156. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015.

Stein, Edith. On the Problem of Empathy. Translated by Waltraut Stein. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1989.

Stein, Edith. Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being. Translated by Kurt F. Reinhardt. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2002.

Study Guide – Edith Stein and Laudato Si’Download

OpenAI’s ‘ChatGPT for Teachers

K-12 education in the United States is going to look VERY different in just a few short years…

OpenAI rolls out ‘ChatGPT for Teachers’ for K-12 educators:

OpenAI on Wednesday announced ChatGPT for Teachers, a version of its artificial intelligence chatbot that is designed for K-12 educators and school districts.

Educators can use ChatGPT for Teachers to securely work with student information, get personalized teaching support and collaborate with colleagues within their district, OpenAI said. There are also administrative controls that district leaders can use to determine how ChatGPT for Teachers will work within their communities.

The Wonder of Bodegas

I love bodegas and am always so happy to discover a new one, whether in New York City or Garden City, SC!

New York’s Bodegas Are Here to Stay – The New York Times:

Even if their hours and the items they stock on their shelves change, there is one thing that will perhaps never disappear from the bodega — the human touch.

“It’s the warmth that we give to our customers,” said Ms. Kim. “It’s very, very important that customers know that we see them and know that we’re there.”

End of Farmer’s Almanac (Not the Old One But Still)

I’m a huge fan of the Old Farmer’s Almanac (not the one shutting down), but still hate to see this.

A lesser-known Farmers’ Almanac will fold after 2 centuries, citing money trouble (AP):

The Farmers’ Almanac, not to be confused with its older, longtime competitor, The Old Farmer’s Almanac in neighboring New Hampshire, said Thursday that its 2026 edition will be its last. The almanac cited the growing financial challenges of producing and distributing the book in today’s “chaotic media environment.” Access to the online version will cease next month.

ChatGPT and Search Engines

Interesting numbers for Google, etc…

Are AI Chatbots Changing How We Shop? | Yale Insights:

A very recent study on this topic was conducted by a group of economists in collaboration with OpenAI’s Economic Research team. According to this paper, most ChatGPT usage falls into three categories, which the authors call practical guidance, seeking information, and writing. Notably, the share of messages classified as seeking information rose from 18% in July 2024 to 24% in June 2025, highlighting the ongoing shift from traditional web search toward AI-assisted search.

Lignin instead of OLED?

Fascinating… more things like this, please.

Scientists turn wood waste into glowing material for TVs and phones:

An eco-friendly substitute has been developed for the light-emitting materials used in modern display technologies, such as TVs and smartphones.

The new material uses a common wood waste product to create a greener future for electronics, removing toxic metals and avoiding complex, polluting manufacturing methods.

Researchers from Yale University and Nottingham Trent University have designed it.

Overnight at USS Yorktown with Ben

Ben and I are just getting back from his Scouts trip and overnight at the USS Yorktown in Charleston. I’ve been to the Yorktown several times over the years and have done overnight stays on the ship with middle school groups I’ve taught, but getting to spend the last few days with my son on board was such a great experience.

Sitting in the theater watching The Fighting Lady: The Lady And The Sea (1945) with him last night and hearing how silent and engaged all the boys were during the movie about the ship’s early role in WWII was incredibly moving (warning, there’s some ethnic and racial slurs in the film as was the style of the time, but it’s still an interesting timepiece).

I’m also glad to see Gov. McMaster taking seriously the ongoing pollution from the aging ship and working on ways to remediate some of it to protect the incredible beauty and diversity of Charleston Harbor’s ecosystem, which was in the news this week! We enjoyed watching the dolphins play in the water this morning, and I hope that unique area thrives for many more decades and centuries to come.

Plasma Consciousness: Thinking With the Luminous Universe

Some nights here in Spartanburg, when the humidity settles like a gentle hand on the earth and the sky finally exhales after a hot Carolina day, I go outside to stand beneath the walnut tree. There’s a particular quiet that isn’t silence at all. It hums. It holds. It feels charged, like something is speaking in a language older than breath.

That stillness always reminds me: we don’t live in a dead universe.

Most of the visible universe, ninety-nine percent, isn’t solid matter at all. It is plasma. A luminous, relational sea of charged particles. Currents and fields. Filaments stretching between galaxies. A cosmos not built from bricks, but from glowing threads of electricity and flow.

In school, we learn, and I taught the states of matter like a checklist—solid, liquid, gas, and plasma as a throwaway footnote. But plasma is not a footnote. It is the rule, and our familiar solids are the exception. The universe is radiant, alive with movement, constantly exchanging information and energy.

Physics tells us that plasma behaves in collective ways, self-organizing, dynamic, responsive to disturbances, and creative in its patterns. Process thinkers like Whitehead remind us that reality itself is relational becoming. Thomas Berry whispers, “The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.” And my own practice of watching the seasons through a single tree, learning to listen instead of command, keeps confirming it in the soil of experience.

If consciousness is not a switch flipped by neurons but a field that emerges from relationship, then plasma invites us into a bigger imagination of mind. Not disembodied mysticism. Not new-age glitter. But a grounded recognition that life and awareness might be woven into the fabric of becoming itself.

A tree’s communication with fungi under soil. A river responding to drought. Human emotion is entangled with weather and place. Stars singing in plasma arcs across galactic filaments.

This doesn’t diminish our humanity. It situates it.

We are not the lonely minds in a mute universe. We are participants in a luminous commons.

Maybe the first step toward ecological repair is remembering we never lived in a mechanical world to begin with. We live in a vibrant, shimmering, relational cosmos. A universe charged with possibility, longing, and attention.

And maybe consciousness is less a private possession and more a shared pulse in the field — like wind through pine needles, like sap rising, like starlight in summer air.

I stand beneath this walnut tree and remember:
I am not separate.
I am charge.
I am relation.
I am part of a glowing, praying universe that has been speaking long before humans arrived to give it names.

The cosmos hums. I am hum. And you are too.

The Great Work Ahead of Us

Worth the time to read and process… The Great Work (to invoke Thomas Berry here) ahead of us is daunting. Still, we have the opportunity to create something where human and the more-than-human are encouraged not only to survive but to thrive (together), ultimately, if we only speak up… 

Is This Rock Bottom?:

So yes, the fights over SNAP, ACA subsidies, and shutdowns matter — but they’re symptoms, not causes. You don’t get 40 million people needing food aid and 100 million drowning in medical debt because of one bad president or one unlucky decade. You get there because the institutions that were supposed to protect the public spent decades serving somebody else.

An Ecology of the Cross Audio Reflection

Here’s my audio reflection on Marder’s thought technology of “The Ecology of Thought”… it’s a really powerful notion. This is from my regular tracking and tree-sit journal with a black walnut that I’ve grown to love and learn from daily.

Mullins Church Celebrates 250th Anniversary

I grew up in Mullins and attended Little Bethel Baptist down the street from Gapway Baptist, but have been to Gapway many times over the years (and my best friend Eric lived beside the church growing up, so we used the grounds as our staging area for Voltron and Transformer and He-Man adventures)… congrats on 250 years and here’s to the next 250!

‘A Blessing’: Mullins church celebrates 250th year during Homecoming service | WBTW:

Sunday’s service at the Gapway Baptist Church in Mullins looked a little different as worshippers celebrated 250 years of service and community.

The church was founded in 1775 and has continued to stand strong. On Sunday, lifelong members, new members and former members filled its pews for the homecoming service.

Boomer Ellipsis…

As a PhD student… I do a lot of writing. I love ellipses, especially in Canvas discussions with Professors and classmates as I near the finish line of my coursework. 

I’m also a younger Gen X’er / Early Millennial (born in ’78 but was heavily into tech and gaming from the mid-80’s because my parents were amazingly tech-forward despite us living in rural South Carolina). The “Boomer Ellipsis” take makes me very sad since I try not to use em dashes as much as possible now due to AI… and now I’m going to be called a boomer for using… ellipsis.

Let’s just all write more. Sigh. Here’s my obligatory old man dad emoji 👍

On em dashes and elipses – Doc Searls Weblog:

While we’re at it, there is also a “Boomer ellipsis” thing. Says here in the NY Post, “When typing a large paragraph, older adults might use what has been dubbed “Boomer ellipses” — multiple dots in a row also called suspension points — to separate ideas, unintentionally making messages more ominous or anxiety-inducing and irritating Gen Z.” (I assume Brooke Kato, who wrote that sentence, is not an AI, despite using em dashes.) There is more along the same line from Upworthy and NDTV.

On Whale Poop

I learned something new today…

Impact of baleen whales on ocean primary production across space and time | PNAS:

Whales have long been suggested to enhance ocean productivity by recycling essential nutrients, yet their quantitative impact on primary production has remained uncertain. Our study quantifies nutrient release via feces and urine by baleen whales in high-latitude feeding grounds and evaluates its impact on primary production using ecosystem models. Results indicate that whales enhance ocean productivity, particularly in offshore regions where nutrients are scarce, leading to cascading effects on the food web. These findings highlight the ecological importance of whale-mediated nutrient cycling and emphasize the role of whale populations in sustaining productive and resilient marine ecosystems.

Magnolias Over Ballrooms

I’d rather have a magnolia or most any vegetal kin over a ballroom to honor my memory, but that’s just me…

Trump Rips Out Presidents’ Historic Trees for New Ballroom:

Satellite imagery shows that six trees, including southern magnolias commemorating presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt, were axed or removed from the White House grounds this week as Trump abruptly demolished the East Wing.

OpenAI’s Sky for Mac

This is going to be one of those acquisition moments we look back on in a few years (months?) and think “wow! that really changed the game!” sort of like when Google acquired Writely to make Google Docs…

OpenAI’s Sky for Mac wants to be your new work buddy and maybe your boss | Digital Trends:

So, OpenAI just snapped up a small company called Software Applications, Inc. These are the folks who were quietly building a really cool AI assistant for Mac computers called “Sky.”

Integral Plasma Ecology: Toward a Cosmological Theology of Energy and Relation

I’m talking about plasma and ecology a little more… there’s a lot here that needs to be explored.

Abstract

This paper develops the concept of Integral Plasma Ecology as a framework that bridges physics, cosmology, and ecological theology through a process-relational lens. Drawing from Alfred North Whitehead’s cosmology, Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionary mysticism, and Thomas Berry’s integral ecology, I propose that plasma, the most abundant and least understood state of matter in the cosmos, can serve as a metaphysical and theological metaphor for participatory consciousness and relational ecology. My background in physics education informs this exploration, as I integrate scientific understandings of plasma’s dynamics with phenomenological and theological insights from Merleau-Ponty, Edith Stein, and Leonardo Boff. The result is a vision of reality as a living field of plasma-like relationality, charged with energy, consciousness, and divine creativity.

Introduction: From Physics to Ecology

Teaching AP Physics for more than a decade invited me to teach the universe’s foundational structures of motion, fields, and forces. I taught students how energy moves through systems, how charge generates fields, and how the visible world depends on invisible relations. Yet it was through my doctoral work in ecology and religion that these physical insights deepened into theological questions. What if these energetic relationships are not merely physical but also metaphysical? What if the cosmos itself is an ecological process of becoming, an ever-living plasma of divine relation?

As Whitehead writes, “the energetic activity considered in physics is the emotional intensity entertained in life” (Whitehead 1978, 113). This simple but profound statement reframes matter not as inert but as alive with feeling. Physics thus becomes a spiritual ecology and a study of how creativity courses through the veins of the universe.

In this paper, I build on that insight, proposing that plasma, the ionized, dynamic, relational state of matter, embodies the ontological structure of reality described by process philosophy and integral ecology. Plasma is the medium of creation: relational, dynamic, self-organizing, and luminous. It is the cosmos’ own ecology.

Plasma: The Fourth State of Matter as First Principle

Plasma constitutes over 99% of the visible universe (Peratt 1992, 4). From stars to nebulae, from lightning to auroras, plasma bridges energy and matter, revealing that the cosmos is not built of solid bodies but of dynamic, interpenetrating fields. In a plasma, electrons and ions exist in constant tension as an interplay of attraction and repulsion, order and chaos.

As a physics teacher, I explained plasma to students as “a soup of charged particles,” but even that language undersells its mystery. Plasma self-organizes into filaments and double layers, forming intricate networks that resemble neural or ecological systems. This self-organization without central control challenges the Newtonian image of matter as passive substance. It invites metaphysical reflection: perhaps plasma is a cosmological icon of relational being and a physical analogue for what theologians call the divine pleroma, or fullness of life.

Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man anticipated this perspective when he described matter as “spirit-in-evolution,” energized from within by a divine impetus (Teilhard 1959, 56). Plasma, as the living medium of the universe, may represent that very process as matter suffused by its own luminous consciousness.

Process and Participation: Whitehead, Cobb, and Berry

In Whitehead’s process cosmology, the universe is composed not of things but of events or occasions of experience that prehend one another in an ongoing flow of creativity (Whitehead 1978). Energy is not something added to matter but the form of its feeling. Plasma, then, is not simply physical energy but a processual manifestation of relational creativity with the universe becoming itself through fields of feeling or being or perception.

John Cobb, a key interpreter of Whitehead, extends this insight into ecological theology, arguing that “God and the world are relationally co-creative; the world participates in God’s creative advance” (Cobb 1985, 87). This participation, like plasma dynamics, is nonlinear, chaotic, and interdependent. There is no static center; instead, reality unfolds through relational patterns of mutual influence.

Thomas Berry’s call for an “integral ecology” resonates deeply here. In The Great Work, Berry envisions the universe as a single, living communion of subjects rather than a collection of objects (Berry 1999, 16). The plasma universe offers a tangible vision of that communion: everything is charged, in motion, and co-creating. Energy and consciousness are not separate categories but expressions of the same cosmic pulse.

Phenomenology and the Plasma of Perception

Turning from cosmology to phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty and Edith Stein offer complementary perspectives on relational being. For Merleau-Ponty, perception is “an intertwining, a flesh of the world” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 147). This “flesh” is not simply physical matter but a relational medium, much like plasma, that binds perceiver and perceived in a dynamic exchange.

Stein, in On the Problem of Empathy, describes consciousness as fundamentally participatory: to know another is to “live into” them, to resonate with their inner life (Stein 1989, 11). In plasma terms, empathy is the transfer of charge across a relational field. Consciousness is an electro-phenomenological event, where selves co-arise through interaction.

This phenomenological perspective reframes plasma as existential metaphor. The cosmos itself perceives, or feels, through its fields. Every charged particle participates in the world’s ongoing self-awareness. Thus, Integral Plasma Ecology posits that ecological consciousness is not uniquely human but cosmic, woven into the plasma fabric of being.

Integral Theory and the Ecology of Energy

The term “integral” situates this framework within the lineage of integral thinkers such as Ken Wilber, Sri Aurobindo, and Jean Gebser, who each envisioned reality as a multidimensional, evolving whole. In Wilber’s AQAL model (all quadrants, all levels), energy and consciousness co-evolve across developmental lines (Wilber 2000, 44). Plasma, as both physical and metaphysical energy, bridges those quadrants—interior and exterior, individual and collective.

In Integral Plasma Ecology, plasma functions as an integrative metaphor and ontological medium. It unites:

  • Physical energy (electromagnetic fields, thermodynamics)
  • Biological life (ecological flows and feedbacks)
  • Spiritual consciousness (divine creativity and relational presence)

This integration reflects Teilhard’s noosphere where the emergence of collective consciousness through the energetic evolution of matter. Humanity’s ecological crises, then, are not merely environmental but energetic dissonances within the plasma field of creation. Our technologies, economies, and even theologies have disrupted the cosmic charge balance.

Toward an Integral Plasma Ecology

Building on these traditions, I define Integral Plasma Ecology as:

“A participatory framework for understanding energy, consciousness, and ecology as manifestations of a single, relational plasma of creativity.”

Its key premises are:

  1. Ontological Continuity: Matter, life, and mind are phases of the same energetic continuum.
  2. Relational Primacy: Reality is constituted by relations, not substances.
  3. Participatory Consciousness: Perception and energy exchange are coextensive phenomena.
  4. Integral Practice: Healing the ecological crisis requires rebalancing our energetic and spiritual relations with the cosmos.

From the ionosphere to the biosphere, plasma organizes itself through feedback loops that mirror ecological networks. Lightning, solar flares, and auroras become more than meteorological curiosities, and they are expressions of what could be considered planetary consciousness.

In this sense, the Earth’s magnetosphere is a form of cosmic empathy, or a membrane that translates solar energy into life-giving patterns. The planet participates in the cosmic plasma dance, filtering chaos into order, radiation into rhythm.

Theological Implications: The Cross and the Charge

For me, the cross serves as a central symbol for this plasma cosmology. In my ongoing work on The Ecology of the Cross, I have proposed that the cross represents not only human suffering but the interpenetration of divine and cosmic energies. In a plasma field, positive and negative charges continually intersect, annihilate, and generate light. Likewise, the cross signifies the intersection of divine transcendence and immanent materiality and creation’s own plasma arc.

As Whitehead puts it, “God is the poet of the world, with tender patience leading it by his vision of truth, beauty, and goodness” (Whitehead 1978, 346). The divine presence, like an electromagnetic field, permeates creation, luring it toward harmony. Yet, as plasma reminds us, equilibrium arises not from stasis but from dynamic tension. The divine is not separate from chaos but works through it.

In this view, Christ’s crucifixion becomes a cosmic event: the discharge of divine energy into the plasma of existence, reconciling opposites and igniting the potential for renewal. Integral Plasma Ecology thus extends Christology into a cosmotheandric ecology when and where God, cosmos, and humanity participate in one charged field of becoming (Panikkar 1993, 58).

Ecological Ethics in a Plasma Universe

If the cosmos is a plasma ecology, then ethics must shift from dominion to participation. Every act, every thought, emission, or prayer, sends ripples through the field. Leonardo Boff’s Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor emphasizes that ecological healing depends on recovering our “mystical sense of communion with the universe” (Boff 1997, 67). Plasma theology radicalizes that claim: communion is not symbolic but ontological.

To pollute a river is to alter the energetic balance of the planet; to pray beside it is to restore resonance. Our responsibility is not to manage nature as resource but to resonate with it as fellow participant. This echoes Berry’s notion of the “Great Work” and the transformation of human presence from disruption to participation (Berry 1999, 105).

In educational terms, teaching physics or ecology becomes a spiritual practice. Students learn not only equations but energetic empathy with an awareness that to study energy is to encounter the divine flow itself.

Integrating Pedagogy: Teaching the Plasma Universe

In the classroom, I once drew magnetic field lines on the board, showing how charges move in loops rather than straight lines. Now I see that lesson differently. Those loops are metaphors for relational return to the continual circulation of divine energy through matter and consciousness.

An integral pedagogy of plasma would invite students to see science and spirituality not as opposites but as complementary ways of tracing those loops. Using laboratory experiments, like plasma globes or Van de Graaff generators, can become invitations to wonder at the living electricity of creation.

As David Bohm argued, the universe is a “holomovement,” a continuous enfolding and unfolding of energy and meaning (Bohm 1980, 48). Teaching within that paradigm transforms education into ecological initiation: a way of learning to dwell consciously in the plasma field of being.

Conclusion: The Luminous Communion

Integral Plasma Ecology reimagines reality as a luminous communion of charged relations. It bridges physics and theology, matter and mind, offering a cosmological language for our age of ecological crisis. It invites us to live as participants in the plasma field and to sense the divine energy pulsing through trees, storms, and starlight.

As Berry wrote, “The universe is not a collection of objects, but a communion of subjects” (Berry 1999, 16). In plasma, that communion shines visibly as the very light of the world is the glow of relation.

To dwell in that light is our calling, our work, and our joy.

References

Berry, Thomas. The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. New York: Bell Tower, 1999.

Boff, Leonardo. Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997.

Bohm, David. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London: Routledge, 1980.

Cobb, John B. Process Theology as Political Theology. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968.

Panikkar, Raimon. The Cosmotheandric Experience: Emerging Religious Consciousness. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993.

Peratt, Anthony L. Physics of the Plasma Universe. New York: Springer, 1992.

Stein, Edith. On the Problem of Empathy. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1989.

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Phenomenon of Man. New York: Harper & Row, 1959.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. New York: Free Press, 1978.

Wilber, Ken. A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality. Boston: Shambhala, 2000.

Connecting Churches with the Communities in Our Distracted Age

I don’t like the “consumers” language for ontological and theological reasons, but the intent is still helpful. He’s not wrong here… and it’s something that nonprofits and churches could learn as well if they want to get past the noise and have meaningful engagement with their communities.

Connecting with the Consumer in a Distracted Age | Yale Insights:

Consumers are overwhelmed a bit with the paradox of information available to them today. We’re in this environment where you have every song available on your phone yet there’s never anything to listen to. You have every show available on your TV, and there’s nothing to watch. You have every food available for delivery, and there’s nothing to eat.

So as brands are trying to reach these consumers with messages—when they have access to everything and often don’t pay attention to all the inbound messages—it’s hard to cut through.

Marketing That Happens is essentially the hack. It’s how you get people to engage. It involves taking your brand beyond the walls of paid media to leverage the power of earned media, organic social media, and creativity to create something interesting enough and relevant enough to talk about. Marketing That Happens is about a creative standard of higher engagement. It’s about people self-selecting and “opting in” to your brand’s content—and seeking it out themselves—because it’s interesting to them, given its context, cultural relevance, and the uniqueness of the core creative idea.

Prompt Injection Attacks and ChatGPT Atlas

Good points here by Simon Willison about the new ChatGPT Atlas browser from OpenAI…

Introducing ChatGPT Atlas:

I’d like to see a deep explanation of the steps Atlas takes to avoid prompt injection attacks. Right now it looks like the main defense is expecting the user to carefully watch what agent mode is doing at all times!

“Nightmare for College Students”

We were hit by the Canvas outage at CIIS… it’s amazing that I can have classes for my PhD work with students from around the world, but this is a stark reminder of how delicate those connections are when we rely on centralized technology/power/food production rather than having things local and distributed (as they should be, ultimately… such as solar power networks)…

The AWS Outage Was a Nightmare for College Students | WIRED:

But the disruptions to students are a testament to just how popular Canvas is on college campuses—and how much of modern educational life is increasingly centered on a handful of educational technology platforms.