[What did de Chardin see as our illusion?

We long to be above the participation.  We long to be like God.

Consider those who have arranged that they never slip back into Nothingness.  Consider Lenin and now, Chavez.  Their plasticized remains are on display for all to see.  They are preserved as demonic apparitions beneath glass facades.

Compare them to the famous Christian relics, which are preserved in equally beautiful, sublime and scary apparatuses.  The saints did not ask to be so preserved.  In a way, their admirers preserved their bodies against the wishes of the saints.

Relics are icons of a “remembering”.  They are our way of asking God to not forget this moment, or that moment, when the spontaneous order held this person of great gravity and intensity.

We cannot imagine that this moment, every moment, is God Recognizing Himself.   Even though we physically return to Nothingness, something remains.

God remains.]