Author Christine Tracy's "Just Trust Life" comes alive in Niwot

Although last Friday's spring snowstorm made driving conditions less than ideal, it didn't deter residents from coming out to Cottonwood Square's Una Vida to hear author, journalist, and academic Christine M. Tracy mark the Niwot debut of her new book, "Just Trust Life."

"Just Trust Life" focuses on how the work of Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin guided Tracy through a series of difficult life challenges, including infidelity, a house fire, addiction, and a near-death experience. "I paid attention, read his writings, studied his life," Tracy said. "I wasn't at all sure how to get there, but I believed that the world, my world, was indeed going somewhere. If he could find his way through betrayal, heartache, and pain, I could too."

The reading, sponsored by Inkberry Books, was attended by a warm, enthusiastic group looking to hear Tracy's story and learn more about the French-born Jesuit priest, mystic, theologian, war hero, and scientist who experienced a turbulent, creative religious calling.

In the book, de Chardin didn't hold back from expressing ideas on topics including original sin and the divine nature of man, regardless of the church's comfort. Over time, his work and his courage earned him large numbers of followers. "Teilhard defined what evolution means on a personal and universal level, and demonstrated through his own life how to live that truth," she said. A member of the Council of Scholar Advisors for the Teilhard de Chardin Project, Tracy first learned about de Chardin while working as a press aide at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York. Before its present-day use, the location was occupied by St. Andrew-on-Hudson, a Jesuit novitiate established in 1903. The current campus includes a vintage cemetery site containing de Chardin's final resting place, where he was interred following his death, 70 years ago, on Easter Sunday. Tracy's role at the CIA made her aware of the number of people who traveled to Hyde Park to visit his grave, and their devotion sparked her interest in his life and work. Tracy first wrote about de Chardin while in graduate school and has subsequently published multiple scholarly essays exploring his relationship to an array of progressive disciplines. In the book, she explained that his writings helped her to value her own sense of transcendence and value in the world. She appreciated his deep belief in the energy animating all life, particularly an energy of love, and value for all.

The title of the book was inspired by a section of one of de Chardin's letters to two friends, written between 1926-1952 and published by New American Library in 1968. The section reads:

Just trust life.

Life will bring you high,

if only you are careful in selecting,

In the maze of events, those

Influences or those paths

Which can bring you each time

a little more upward.

Life has to be discovered

And built step by step:

A great charm.

If only one is convinced

(by faith and experience)

That the world is going

Somewhere.