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This will make a great deal of information easily available. It looks very valuable. Thanks for pointing it out.
Hey Lowell!! Great that you put the BH History on the Network! Many thanks!
Great presentation Jennifer!! Wish I could see the video if one was recorded during the program. Just curious if you are familiar with the work of Connie Barlow (wife of Michael Dowd) who is a science writer and developed a wide array of children’s material regarding the story of the universe. No one has posted her work as yet in the resources section. I am going to email her and let her know about your site.
Thanks so much for you comment Richard. Yes indeed I know Connie. She and Michael have been friends for years and are definitely on list of people to contact about the site. Over the years Connie has developed a huge resource list which we definitely want on the Deep Time Journey Network. Unfortunately the keynote address for the American Montessori Society was not video taped. I’ll be posting other videos soon. I understand from Mary Coelho that you also have a wealth of resources to share. Great to have you on the Network Richard!
Scientists must also be careful when speaking on subjects not within their usually narrow range of expertise. While, in general, scientists have an easier time than non-scientists understanding fields of science outside their specialties because scientists have a familiarity with the basic concepts and procedures of science. Even so many aspects of the history of the Universe/Earth are complex enough that scientists outside their specialties must enter into discussions with an appropriate measure of humbleness.
Frankly, in some ways the risk is greater for the scientist. A non-scientist is easily forgiven small mistakes. A scientist often not so readily.
Great video Larry. So simply, fun and educational!
This is a fantastic video. Thanks so much for posting Larry. Be sure to add a thumbnail.
Thanks so much for adding this resource Jean. It gives a terrific overview of distinctions between Technozoic, ecological and Ecozoic models, with the Ecozoic how situating everything inside a creative evolving universe. A valuable resource for the classroom.
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I tried to link to the resource but I got a message saying Internet Explorer could not find it. I wonder what is happening. Mary Coelho
This is an excellent monograph. The addition of attraction and connection to Teilhard’s evolutionary process of increasing complexity is extremely helpful. I can’t recommend it enough.
Paula Guarnaccia
Beautiful ritual, Terry, and so appropriately and movingly adapted to the group using it. Kudos, yet again, for your prolific creativity. Blessings, Terri
Awesome, Jennifer! I’d love to watch children using this — what a way to start one’s education! Thanks for creating this. Blessings, Terri
Thanks Terri! For a child to understand intellectually and in their bodies that they are part of an evolving universe is hugely impactful.
The whole thrust of the thinking of Teilhard de Chardin makes so much sense in a world which is getting so complex. Amidst this complexification of life and thoughts, Teilhard’s thinking opens up a floodlight of hope, the most wanted item today.
Teachers who search for hope will find a mine of positive thinking here.
St Francis was amazing. Thanks for this.
Happy to find this. It’s like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights taken further.
Thanks, Jonathan! Really happy that you liked it!
I have almost finished Teilhard’s Mysticism, Kathy, and couldn’t be more enthusiastic about it. I just sent word of it to the SHCJ-sponsored EcoSpirituality Group, and I shall include it on my site’s Suggested Books page very soon. Sincere thanks for everything involved in giving us this excellent resource! I’m eager to read it all and eager to return to ponder it.
Wow! Thanks for posting this Pat and for the paragraph about our conversation at Sisters of Earth. It’s part of the New Cosmology that I hope to bring out a lot more going forward. Will send a notice to the Network about the program in India with Vandana. DTJN member Orla Hazra there is very excited that you’re coming.
I can’t seem to connect to this resource. Could you post the link, please?
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Yes: where can we watch the video?
Great to see that your new calendar is out Peter and Caitlin! They’re exquisitely done and I enjoy using them as meditations!
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hi terri and thanks for the reflection of ‘remembrance day’ I can’t get to the link thought, it won’t go through. can you please send me the reflection and i will use it when our class resumes. Today Bill CKibben comes to xaviers for 3 hours so that will be a boost to community efforts.
I would love to order them and did but then at the end it wanted paypal. I am nervous about paypal because of an experience. can i phone you with my card details? I live in India. thanks orla
Hi Orla,
Thank you for your interest in the 2015 calendar! Because we are a small production we do not have direct credit card capacity. I am sorry if you have not had a good experience with Paypal. We have found them efficient and reliable (and they are now owned by Ebay). I hope you will give them a try. We would love to share the Magical Universe Magical Human calendar with you! Warmly, Peter.
We’re on it . . . the link problem that is. If you have any trouble with the link button, you can always copy and past the list which is listed below. Sorry for the trouble. Jennifer
This looks like a really neat book Priscilla. Thanks for adding to Resources!
Thank you for adding the link to these papers! As I attended the recent extraordinary Living Cosmology Conference, I’m eager to read these papers, and savor their deeply thoughtful insights.
Peter Adair’s Magical Universe Calendar is a glorious, beautiful, reverential, and scientifically illuminating work. Do whatever it takes to get one, and give them as gifts that both enhance…..AND….. “give meaning to life….relating the human venture to the larger destinies of the Universe”. -Thomas Berry
The breadth and depth of topics explored at the recent Living Cosmology Conference at the Yale School of Divinity were often revelatory. For me, one of the many highlights was hearing the brilliant and intensely articulate Catherine Keller. A process theologian, professor of Constructive Theology at Drew University, and director of the Drew Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium, she aptly presented on the mind-expanding “Views of the Divine” Panel. In her paper entitled “A Democracy of Fellow Creatures: Feminist Theology and Planetary Entanglement,” she discusses, among other things, how we need to adapt in the Anthropocene. I’m posting here because I think her concluding comments relate to the kind of discourse being facilitated on the Deep Time Journey Network. She says :
“In other words, to mobilize efforts on behalf of an ecosocial democracy of the earth, we who have our various specialized discourses are practicing an ever more transdisciplinary thinking, capable of fostering global networks of transformation in and beyond the traditional disciplines. Spirited new collaborations between traditionally separated constituencies, between the secularly and the religiously earthbound, and at the same time between the humans and nonhumans — may be forming.”
To give you an idea of how astutely Dr Keller weaves philosophy and physics, academic research, hermeneutics, art history and prehistory, she goes on to say:
“Feminist and queer experience of relationality, failure and resilience, of Laurel Schneider’s promiscuous incarnations, may teach us how actually to embody and activate our intersectional webwork. It materializes what I elsewhere call apophatic entanglement. Latour’s “narrative complexity and entanglement of Gaia” deliberately echoes the term entanglement coined in English in 1935 by Schroedinger. It names the quantum phenomenon, now testing out over and over, that summons a cosmology of nonseparability across unthinkable spacetimes. It resonates also with the Whiteheadian and process theological alternative to substance metaphysics: a relational ontology (now gaining a hearing on the Continent through Deleuze, Isabelle Stengers and Latour). For now let me simply claim that within this web of creation, difference is not separation but relationship.”
For me, her last sentence (emphasis mine) imparts an acute clarity that we seek. I think the good news here is that an increasing number of thinking, seeking people are retreating from the divisive fragmentation caused by Descartes’ legacy, and returning to a more interwoven thinking and understanding. Like the Living Cosmology Conference, I think the DTJN promotes this kind of understanding — a rare experience for which I am very grateful!
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Thanks so much for this Terri! Perfect for the season.
Terri, Thank you. I was born on Dec 21st and love to celebrate the winter solstice. You’ve given me some new ways to honour the return of the sun. My Song for the Winter Solstice can be listened to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RWwndp5PqA
Happy Solstice! Pauline
I appreciate your support, yet again, Jennifer! Happy that other DTJN members have amen a look, too. Very best holiday wishes to you and all as we celebrate the solstice tomorrow!
Many thanks for this fine suggestion! I just ordered it, thanks to Christmas gift money and your recommendation.
Thank you Terri for this ritual. I like the connections you are making. It occurred to me as I read through it that you might consider the significance of the recognition by physicists that the “fire” of the sun is a thermonuclear fusion reaction. It is quite different from the fire we know. This enerygy from the sun connects us to very fundamenta creativel processes of the cosmos. Isn’t the reaction occurring in the sun the same nuclear fusion that is the source of the elements we are made of.? In the case in our young star, the sun, it is helium that results from the fusion of hydrogen but it is part of the sequence that made, in earlier stars, the elements of the earth and our bodies (as well as those made in supernova.) This nuclear reaction seems foreign to us compared to the fire we know but perhaps this discovery is something to pursue in a liturgy as it does connect us into fundamental creative processes of the universe. Perhaps some of the scientists on the network could help develop this connection, including telling us about the nature of the light that comes from the sun. It is certainly a most fundamental energy that bathes us daily!
Mary, I am very honored that you read my blog and very grateful that you offered such good ideas to improve it! I love your suggestions, and would do my best to use them next year. I shall keep what you wrote, and I would be truly grateful for any further input from the scientists among us. I have so much to learn!
Thanks for adding this Jon. The periodic table was fascinating to me as a kid and I see that same deep fascination in the programs I give for students and teachers. I’m interested to see the activities you’ve developed.
You’re welcome! We can sign your copy if/when you order one if you like.
“Shakespeare in the Cave” is brilliant, thought-provoking, connective, and inspiring. What an incredibly multivalent presentation! I’m especially moved by how you synthesize macro issues, Rich, and how you facilitate the viewers’ own transformative and/or insightful experiences, versus simply communicate information from your brain to ours. For example, connecting the results of scientific “rules” with the emergence of planets, connecting Carrara marble with earth’s original eco-system, and connecting the development of stone tools with the emergence of narrative, aesthetics, and metaphor is heady, mind-bending stuff! One thing I will continue to contemplate is your comment that: “Van Gogh’s visions and dreams are connected to his ability to sequester electromagnetism from the universe—AND SO IS OURS.” (emphasis mine :-). So, not only is every THING on earth made of star stuff, but our own human PROCESSES are also?! Your interest in the personal and cultural transformative power of Big History totally resonates with me. I applaud your work connecting art and science with Big History and meaning. Also, I loved the bus ride!!
Invaluable! You have gotten to the heart of our work and challenge in this time. The fusion of art and science and meaning may well be the equivalent of discovering language itself. Your presentation collapsed time and space. Imposing the poetry and power of language from one century on the imagery of our digital world not only made deeper sense of each of the parts in a new way. It very well may shape the consciousness of the future species.
You have accomplished what I’ve been trying to do in an experience we provide at our retreat. In a labyrinth walk through the woodlands we have visual markers to denote significant moments of the universe story. But finding the right images to mark ‘the first cell or photosynthesis, etc. has not been satisfying. Why. Because all I could accomplish was a visual and scientific narrative ‘impoverished’ of meaning.
This was an excellent experience for me viewing A Big History of Art.. Thank you, Carol Kilby, Gaia Farmhouse Retreat, wwww.gaiafarmhouse.com
Great comments, Carol! I love your idea that the fusion of art and science may shape future consciousness.
I’ve been thinking more about this presentation/video and the direct connection, Rich, that you make between the ability of humans to dream and envision with electromagnetism from the Big Bang. (Am I understanding this correctly?) I have long understood that our own creative, self-transforming processes are—abstractly and metaphorically—connected with/reflective of the creative, self-transforming processes of the universe. Indeed, my Divine Sparks multimedia project is a metaphor for exactly that! However, I didn’t realize that these human processes—of dreaming and presumably creating too—are scientifically and physically connected to the cosmos. That adds a deeper level of understanding and meaning! For me, this is a fascinating example of how Big History can provide transformative learning.
EEK! Apologies to everyone who cringed when they read the unmatched “resources and unites”! Hope I can correct it.
So excited to learn about the Environmental Evolution newsletter as well as your work in general. A great opportunity to learn about the work of Lynn Margulis and others. Love the Teddy Roosevelt quote in your December issue, as Teddy Roosevelt visited our property on Isle La Motte on September 6, 1901 and it was there that he heard the news that McKinley had been shot. We have used the conservation work of TR to help change the local environmental paradigm on Isle La Motte and beyond. Every year we have an island wide celebration called “Teddy Roosevelt Day.” Hurray for the newsletter!
Great to have this on the Network Mary. Please do tell other Quakers about it. You may want to form a group of Quakers on the Network to look into Quakerism and the New Cosmology so that others can learn from the many years of experience you’ve gained with the New Story Group in Cambridge.
So awesome, Len! Deep gratitude for so beautifully enriching us. Perfect selections of quotes. Your work is a gift.
This is excellent. It is beautiful and it is important to have it presented so clearly. I look forward to going to your website, Thanks you. Mary Coelho
Glad that you liked what you saw in my videos.
Just looking back at your book, I’m delighted in how you pull together the insights of many of the scientific and spiritual thinkers I’ve been trying to assimilate over the years.
Hope you find more that you like on my website.
Len Sroka
Len — enjoyed “Exploring Deep Space”. The quotes and images you chose along with the music help awaken a sense of awe and wonder about our Deep Time Journey! So glad to see this work available for the DTJN community and others to view.
These are really great Jack. I love contemplating each card.
Many thanks, Jack, for alerting us to those great cards! I clicked “Follow” and hope I shall be alerted as more are posted. Years ago I thought I’d “save the world” lettering wonderful quotes, but I learned it wasn’t my call! The concept holds, though, and these certainly contribute!
I’ve listened to and watched a number of these interviews. There are 50 in all. A few are available to watch for free until Saturday, the 21st. There is a fee to have access to all of them. I find the depth of engagement with the Great Story by a wide variety of people heartening and hopeful. There are important insights in some of the interviews.
Thanks Mary. Are there any particular that you would recommend?
I LOVE this! I especially love how it reveals the continual dynamic motion involved in the growth of our universe, earth, and humans!
Hearty congratulations! What a terrific project, and I rejoice that it was recognized and given publicity. I shall share the video widely!
This is a great resource. Many thanks for sharing it.
Hello Stephen Martin: Jennifer Morgan pointed out your membership in the Deep Time Journey Network. We seem to have a somewhat similar story since I caught onto the New Story in the early 1990’s through Brian Swimme’s Canticle to the Cosmos. I thought you would be interested to know that there is an ongoing New Story Group at Friends Meeting at Cambridge. We have been meeting monthly now for almost 10 years. We met last night with 12 or more people. If you have occasion to come to Cambridge we could meet, or at some handy place in downtown Boston. Sincerely, Mary Coelho (http://newuniversestory.com) [email protected]
This is wonder-full! I have been dragging my feet (well, one of them while the other was healing) about making a ritual for my 80th. It won’t be this grand (nor on time), but this motivates me to get started! Thanks for these terrific ideas!
So glad they’re helpful for you Terri. This really is not so hard to pull off at all, if you have a few people to help. And it’s fun and so moving!
So glad they’re helpful for you Terri. This really is not so hard to pull off at all, if you have a few people to help. And it’s fun and so moving!
Wow, I love everything about this! How fabulous that you shared this as a resource so others can celebrate birthdays w this amazing ritual. I love the cake! The mandala-like photo of it conveys the power of your ritual, & makes a great profile pix!! What an extraordinary birthday, Jennifer!
Thanks Imogene. It was an amazing way to celebrate a birthday. And no presents whatsover . . . communion inside an evolving universe was our gift to each other.
What a great way to celebrate your birthday!!!
Also available at http://amzn.to/1MlWaqn
This book was recommended by DTJN member Phil Gang in the light of the Living Systems discussion we’re having on March 26th, 2015.
No. This is sheer mysticism. As such, it’s wishful thinking, but not very serious religion, and not science at all. Words like “living” and “dead” don’t deserve this treatment. They’re innocent things, both having their home in biology. To use “living” in a very broad metaphorical sense, as Duane does, makes it impossible to communicate using those words. As David Christian is clear, the universe is overwhelmingly, almost everywhere, dead. Even the possibilities of life don’t occur until quite a few other Goldilocks Conditions exist. Almost always, almost everywhere, the universe is neither “living” NOR “dead,” because biology doesn’t exist. When and where the conditions exist from which bio- might arise, we might say the possibility of life might exist. But even there, we should take care. Algae may grow on a very large rock. But the rock is not alive, does not have the potential for life, and the algae-life growing on it have no biological connection to it, and didn’t grow from the “potential” of the rock. Nor from the potential of “Earth,” but from something far more local: the potential of a little soup of inorganic, then — in ways we still don’t understand — organic (but not “living”) chemicals. If we find there is a methane-based form that can process energy and reproduce itself, then our definition of “life” will begin to include examples that, for now, we have no evidence. But wishing the universe had an inherent meaning, purpose, would keep our thoughts, feelings, personality, etc. after we’ve died, and the rest of it, is a confusion-creating misuse of the innocent little words “living” and “dead.” My background is theology, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of science, and language philosophy. And from what I know of these fields, this whole attempt to use words like “living” and “dead” in this way must be called out. This is wishing, blown up to the imagined size and scope of a nearly infinite universe we’re just beginning to know. Mystical thinking — whether in religion, science, poetry or movies — is wishing we were in some significant way a part of something not only transcendent but positive and good. Within limits, that’s a good thing. Here on Earth, in some small-to-medium ways, we can identify places in our lives where we can believe that’s true, and those instances are deeply important to us. But blown up beyond that, it becomes hard to distinguish from solipsism and its emotional twin, narcissism: falling in love with something about ourselves so fully that we cannot see anything that isn’t about us. I’m not meaning to be insulting or mean, but to be clear and fairly blunt about the damage done to the possibility of communication when words as important as the biological concepts of “living” and “dead” are stretched out as though they can become meaningful and useful metaphors when applied to something as large as the universe. I don’t know what the IBHA has said about this, but hope they also make distinctions similar to these.
Thanks for these comments, Davidson. Duane refers to much important information. Qualified and limited conclusions from available evidence regarding pre- or extra-biological evidence, and distinctions about different periods and phenomena, are important. The use of words like living and conscious for the universe before biology or outside of it go beyond what the evidence can reasonably support. Still, Duane and others are working productively to find ways to express what could become supportable conclusions about nature. This is a process for all of us.
SUMMARIZING THE SCIENCE OF A LIVING UNIVERSE
(from Chapter 2, “The Living Universe” by Duane Elgin; Importantly, this summary does not include the extensive footnotes found in my book)
It is important to recognize that, within the scientific community, there is no widely accepted definition of “life.” To illustrate the difficulty scientists are encountering, there is no clear demarcation between the living and non-living realms. There is considerable debate, for example, over whether a virus is “alive.” By itself a virus is a non-living entity but when it finds a suitable host—such as a human being— it can rapidly replicate itself (think of the common cold) and evolve into new, more contagious forms. Because the ability to replicate and evolve is fundamental to life, a virus hovers in the gray zone between life and death.
Since we barely understand the mysterious property that we call “life,” it is not surprising that there is no broadly accepted definition of what constitutes life. Is “life” an invisible energy or is it inseparable from the physical container of that energy? Many scientists focus on the container and say that living entities are carbon-based creatures that need water, get their energy either from the Sun or from a chemical source, and are able to reproduce themselves. Although this may be a fitting description of life on the Earth, it is such a narrow definition that it leaves little room for the possibility of alternative expressions. While many scientists apply only a few criteria for describing a living system, I will take into account a demanding array of six criteria—a composite taken from a range of sources—for considering whether the universe is alive:
1. Is the universe unified despite its great size?
2. Is energy flowing throughout?
3. Is it being continuously regenerated?
4. Is there sentience or consciousness throughout?
5. Is there freedom of choice?
6. Is our universe able to reproduce itself?
This is a very challenging list of criteria for our universe to meet if we are to regard it as a living system. Let’s consider them one at a time, drawing insights from respected sources in mainstream science and cosmology. This is not “fringe” science but rather draws from well-established sources within the scientific community.
1. A Unified Universe
A living entity is not a random collection of disconnected parts but a unified whole. How could our universe, which appears to be mostly empty space with widely separated islands of matter, be unified? On the surface, our universe appears to be composed of separate components—from atoms to people to planets. How, then, is it possible to regard these pieces as parts of a unified whole? One of the most stunning insights to emerge from modern science has been described as “non-locality.” The basic idea is simple: In the past, scientists have assumed that instant communication cannot take place between two distant points; instead, it takes time for a message to travel from one place to another, even at the speed of light. Yet scientific experiments show that, despite vast distances that seem impossible to bridge, in reality, everything in the universe is deeply interconnected. Experiments have repeatedly demonstrated that subatomic particles are able to communicate instantly with one another, regardless of the distances that separate them.
The highly regarded physicist, David Bohm, explained this phenomenon by portraying the universe as a gigantic hologram that is regenerated at each moment. In Bohm’s view, the entire cosmos is a dynamic projection from a deeper common ground that is “holographic” in nature. Nonlocality exists, not because of some extremely fast messaging back and forth at the subatomic level, but rather, because separation does not exist. Bohm said that ultimately we have to see the entire universe as “a single, undivided whole.” Instead of separating the universe into living things and nonliving things, he viewed animate and inanimate matter as inseparably interwoven with the Life force that is present throughout the universe.
The eminent physicist John Wheeler expressed the unity of the universe in this way. He said: “Nothing is more important about the quantum principle than this, that it destroys the concept of the world as ‘sitting out there,’ with the observer safely separated from it…. To describe what has happened, one has to cross out that old word ‘observer’ and put in its place the new word ‘participator.’ In some strange sense the universe is a participatory universe.” In the earlier view of a universe composed of separate objects, we could regard ourselves as independent observers; however, in the new understanding of the universe, everything participates with everything else in co-creating reality, moment by moment. As stunning as it seems, nonlocality means that we each participate in the totality of the universe. In the words of the physicist Sir James Jeans, we may think that we are “…individuals carrying on separate existences in space and time, while in the deeper reality beyond space and time we may all be members of one body.”
2. Immense Background Energy
A second key property of living systems is that energy flows through them. What about our universe? Despite the vast reaches of seemingly empty space, is there evidence of energy flowing throughout the totality of the universe? Nearly fourteen billion years after the big bang, the expansion of the universe is not slowing down, as we would expect with a mechanical explosion; instead, it started picking up speed roughly five billion years ago. To account for this expansion, scientists have been shocked to discover that phenomenal amounts of energy present throughout the universe are pushing it apart. This invisible or “dark energy” is causing our universe to expand at an increasing rate and scientists estimate that dark energy comprises the majority of our cosmos—an estimated 73 percent of the universe.
Whatever we call it, the background energy of the cosmos is shockingly large. Physicist David Bohm calculated that a single cubic inch of “empty” space contained far more than the energy equivalent of millions of atomic bombs! Empty space is a dynamically constructed transparency requiring immense amounts of energy to create and sustain. This underlying ocean of energy is the primary reality. This is not simply a theoretical abstraction; a number of scientists are working to invent technologies that can utilize this background energy. In recognizing the immensity of background energy in the cosmos, Bohm said that “matter as we know it is … rather like a tiny ripple on a vast sea.” In a similar way, Sir James Jeans suggested that we think of the world that we see with our senses as the “outer surface of nature, like the surface of a deep flowing stream.” He said that material objects have origins that go “deep down into the stream.”
3. A Continuously Regenerated Universe
Another key characteristic of living systems is continuous regeneration. To illustrate, consider how your body is being continuously renewed: The inner lining of your intestine is renewed roughly every five days, and the outer layer of your skin every two weeks. We receive a new liver approximately every two months, and the bones in our body are fully replaced about every seven to ten years. Clearly, an important attribute of any living creature is continuous regeneration. When we look for evidence of regeneration in the universe, what we discover is that it appears that the entire universe is being continuously regenerated at an incredibly high rate of speed.
If we go to the heart of an atom, for example, what we find is almost entirely empty space. If the central core or nucleus of an atom were expanded to the size of a golf ball, the electrons that circle the core would extend outwards a mile and a half. The electrons that circle the center or nucleus of the atom are moving so fast—circling the nucleus of an atom several trillion times a second—that they manifest as a blurred cloud of motion. Beneath the solid surface of material objects, an extraordinary flow of activity is occurring. If you were to look at a yellow dress for one second, in that amount of time, the electrons in the retinas of your eyes would vibrate with more waves than all the waves that have beat upon all the shores of all the Earth’s oceans in the last ten million years. Physicist Max Born writes, “We have sought for firm ground and found none. The deeper we penetrate, the more restless becomes the universe; all is rushing about and vibrating in a wild dance.” The deeper we look into the heart of matter, the less substantial it seems. Upon close inspection, matter dissolves into knots of energy and space-time whose dynamic stability gives the appearance of enduring solidity. It is extraordinary that this hurricane of flowing motion comes together to present itself as the “ordinary” world around us. As “giants,” it is easy for us to overlook the ongoing miracle taking place at such a microscopic scale.
If we go into the heart of space, what we find is dynamism, energy, and structure. Space is not a pre-existing emptiness waiting to be filled with matter; rather, like matter, it emerges anew at every moment. Empty space is a dynamically constructed transparency filled with immense levels of energy and motion. Einstein wrote, “We have now come to the conclusion that space is the primary thing and matter only secondary.” Erwin Schroedinger, father of quantum theory, stated it this way: “What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just appearances…Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down…for this barrier does not exist.”
Given the dynamism of both matter and space, the universe is, in the words of David Bohm, “an undivided wholeness in flowing movement.” In this view, the entire cosmos is being regenerated at each instant in a single symphony of expression that unfolds from the most microscopic aspects of the subatomic realm, to the vast reaches of billions of galactic systems. The whole cosmos all at once is the basic unit of creation. Scientists sound like poets as they attempt to describe our cosmos in its process of becoming. The mathematician Norbert Wiener expresses it this way: “We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves; whirlpools of water in an ever-flowing river.” Imagine water flowing over rocks in a stream. If we look at the flow over a particular rock, we can see a persisting pattern despite the continuous streaming of water. We, and the rest of the universe, are a persisting pattern that, as physicist Brian Swimme tell us, “emerges out of an all-nourishing abyss not only 14 billion years ago but in every moment.” All flows comprise one grand symphony in which we are all players, a single creative expression—a uni-verse.
4. Sentience at Every Level
The word “consciousness” derives from the root “con-scire” and means, “that with which we know.” Some level of sentience or knowing or consciousness is basic to life. Therefore, if the universe is alive, we should expect to discover evidence of consciousness operating at every level of existence. This does not mean, however, that we should expect to encounter human consciousness. Our scientific name as a species is Homo sapiens sapiens. In other words, we are the species that is not only “sapient” or wise, but “sapient-sapient” or doubly knowing or doubly wise. In contrast, the consciousness that we find at the foundations of the universe could be called “primary perception” or basic sentience. This refers to the capacity for knowing, but without the ability to reflect upon the knowing process itself.
When we look along the spectrum of existence, what do we find? As stated, at the most fundamental levels we find evidence of primary perception. The respected physicist Freeman Dyson wrote the following about consciousness at the quantum level: “Matter in quantum mechanics is not an inert substance but an active agent, constantly making choices between alternative possibilities. . . It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every electron.” Again, this does not mean that an atom has the same consciousness as a human being, but rather that an atom has a reflective capacity appropriate to its form and function. In a similar vein, Max Planck, developer of quantum theory said: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness.” In accepting the Nobel Prize, he said: “All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force. . .We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
Looking one step above the level of the atom, we find a rudimentary consciousness present at the level of primitive molecules. Researchers have found that molecules consisting of no more than a few simple proteins have the capacity for primary perception that is the signature of living systems. As one of the researchers who made this discovery stated, “We were surprised that such simple proteins can act as if they had a mind of their own.”
Next, we step up from molecules to the smallest “living” entities—single celled microbes that are found everywhere, from inside our intestines to the scum on the surface of a pond. Scientists studying bacteria, amoebas, and yeast have discovered that they are intensely social creatures that possess unique forms of language. These single cell creatures are not loners—instead, they are connected as a community and use chemicals to communicate with one another. This is amazing enough, but the truly remarkable finding is that the same chemical communication can have different meanings in different circumstances. Microbes are not unconscious machines but discerning organisms with a social intelligence previously considered possible only in the realm of intelligent animals.
Turning to a higher level of complexity and the world of plants, scientists have found plants can communicate with one another using subtle odor molecules. Plants can send out chemical signals that repel insects; they can also attract insects that eat the pests that feed on their leaves. Not only can plants use chemical signals in their defense, they can also use them to warn other plants of danger, enabling their neighbors to jump-start their defenses. Again, we find a rudimentary knowing or a discerning sentience.
When we turn to the world of animals, we find elements of human-like consciousness that indicate we are less unique than we previously thought. For example, self-recognition is not restricted to humans. Great apes as well as elephants, dolphins, magpie birds, and pigeons are able to recognize themselves in a mirror. A capacity for empathy and feeling for another animal has been observed in primates, dolphins, whales, elephants, dogs, hippos, birds, and even some rodents. Tool making has been observed in crows, chimps, and bonobos (a species of great apes). Dolphins have also shown they can use tools; for example, they will sometimes use the spiny body of a dead scorpion fish to get a moray eel out of its hiding place. The ability to understand language has been observed in dolphins, bonobos, and parrots. Overall, there is a continuum of consciousness and an array of animals has demonstrated they have an active consciousness and a much richer cognitive life than previously suspected. Although we humans have an advanced capacity for reflective consciousness, we are not a unique and separate form of life; instead, we have simply progressed further along a spectrum of reflective consciousness.
Because we find evidence of primary perception or some form of consciousness operating at the level of atoms, molecules, single-cell organisms, plants, and animals, we should not be surprised that sentience is a basic property of the universe.
5. Freedom at the Foundations
Another attribute of living systems is their freedom to make choices. Without some measure of freedom of choice, existence is that of a meaningless machine. Is our universe a mechanical system without authentic freedom at its foundations? Or is it a living system that has the freedom to grow and develop in innovative ways?
The earlier, Newtonian paradigm envisioned a deterministic universe where, once the laws governing things were understood, everything could be predicted. In striking contrast, findings from quantum physics tell us that uncertainty is built into the fabric of the universe. At the quantum level, where our universe comes into existence, the certainty that we find at the larger scales breaks down and, instead, we find only probabilities. At the foundation of the universe is the quantum foam seething with titanic energies and this is where we enter a realm of likelihood, of possibilities and estimated outcomes. Freedom and uncertainty are basic to the quantum level where the universe continuously recreates itself and provides us with an opportunity to exercise our freedom to do the same.
Freedom permeates our lives. We are playing jazz together. The world is a collective improvisation, and we have the creative freedom to transcend the habits of nature. While uncertainty and freedom are fundamental to our universe, freedom is not without limits. Everything that exists contributes to the overall cosmic web at each moment, whether it is conscious of its participation or not. In turn, it is the interrelation of all parts of the universe that determines the condition of the whole. We, therefore, have great freedom to act, but only within the limits established by the larger web of life.
6. Able to Reproduce Itself
An essential capacity for any living system is the ability to reproduce itself. How could our universe produce offspring universes? A startling insight from the frontiers of physics suggests the answer—our universe may be able to reproduce itself through the functioning of black holes. Astrophysicist John Gribbin explains that the bursting out of our universe in the big bang is the time-reversed mirror image of the collapse of a massive object into a black hole. Many of the black holes that form in our universe, he reasons, may represent wormholes that lead to new universes: “Instead of a black hole representing a one-way journey to nowhere, many researchers now believe that it is a one-way journey to somewhere—to a new expanding universe in its own set of dimensions.” A growing number of cosmologists are now suggesting a universe evolves like other living systems—by passing along favorable characteristics to their offspring: “Universes that are ‘successful’ are the ones that leave the most offspring.
An Integrative View from Science
When we bring together these findings from science, an extraordinary picture begins to emerge: Our universe is a profoundly unified system in which the interrelations of all the parts determine at every moment the condition of the system as a whole. Our universe is permeated and sustained by an unimaginably immense amount of flowing energy; it is being continuously regenerated in its entirety while making use of a knowing capacity or consciousness throughout. The universe appears to have the ability to reproduce itself by using black holes as a wormhole for creating a new cosmic system. As an evolving, growing, and learning system, it also has freedom as a fundamental property of the quantum foundations.
Because the universe appears to meet each of these key criteria for “aliveness,” current scientific evidence points toward the conclusion that the universe is a living system. While these combined properties do not prove the universe is a living system, they point clearly in that direction. Because our universe embodies core properties that are common to living systems, from a scientific perspective, it seems compelling to explore the universe as a unique kind of living system.
Why do we care whether we label the Universe alive or dead or mechanical or whatever. At that level the discussion is one of definitions, lacking insight into what is really important. For me the subject is really how to express my awe, my gratitude, my profound sense of belonging within my new understanding of the beauty, complexity, and creativity of the Universe and especially Earth. The difficulty I think we all face is that all our special, meaningful words have been reserved for non-Universe entities.
So, I believe, we call the Universe alive, and therefore challenge our normal use of the word, simply to honor the Universe. What other words do we have that capture such grandeur, such creativity? Some folks take the simple way out: the Universe is God. That works for some, but terminates the discussion in the metaphoric.
But that doesn’t work for me. If God is the creator of the Universe, then God is the Universe process. This moves the discussion from the metaphoric to the real, to what we actually know of the Universe and Earth. And to honor this process we label it “living”. That is fine. Metaphors are commonly used to honor.
But why the word “living”? That is the interesting question in this discussion. Why do we choose the word “living”? Because we value life over non-life. This certainly makes sense to us as living creatures; but it is not how Earth functions. Earth constantly converts life into non-life and non-life back into life. From our recently acquired historical perspective there is no obvious preference of life over non-life in Earth’s functioning. And many cultures have realized this, our western culture not being one of them.
We westerners honor life over non-life and so bestow the label “life” on the Universe (and Earth) to communicate our reverence, our deep gratitude for the gift of existence. So we can now discuss the real subject: cosmology (world view). What is the impact of honoring life over non-life, that is, in not being congruent with Earth’s functioning?
Lawrence: You raise a vitally important question: “Why do we care whether we label the Universe alive or dead. . . ?”
Here are five reasons why I think it is important to honor the universe as a living system:
1. Transformed Identity: In the paradigm of scientific materialism, we are no more than bio-chemical beings—evolutionary accidents whose consciousness and aliveness are ultimately separate from the rest of the non-living and unconscious universe that surrounds us. In contrast, from a living systems perspective, we are both biological beings and cosmic participants in a vast field of life-energy. Our identity is immeasurably deeper and larger than imagined by scientific materialism: Physicist Brian Swimme explains that the intimate sense of self-awareness we experience bubbling up at each moment, “is rooted in the originating activity of the universe. We are all of us arising together at the center of the cosmos.” We thought that we were no bigger than our physical bodies, but now we are learning that we are participants in the flow of continuous creation of the cosmos. Awakening to our identity as simultaneously distinct and intimately interconnected with a living universe can help us transform feelings of existential separation and species-arrogance that threaten our future.
2. Compelling Purpose: A non-living universe is not conscious and is therefore oblivious to any sense of human purpose. As existentially separate life-forms, we may strive heroically to impose some reason for our existence on the universe, but this is ultimately fruitless in a cosmos unaware of life. In dramatic contrast, a living universe is intent on growing self-referencing and self-organizing systems within itself at every scale. We are expressions of aliveness that, after nearly 14 billion years, enable the universe to look back and reflect upon itself. A living universe paradigm brings a profound shift in our evolutionary purpose: We are moving from seeing ourselves dropped into a fragmented and lifeless cosmos without apparent meaning or purpose, to seeing ourselves on a sacred journey within a living and unified cosmos whose purpose is to serve as a learning system. If the cosmos is a learning system, then a primary purpose would be for us to learn from both the pleasures and the pains of the world. If there were no freedom to make mistakes, there would be no pain. If there were no freedom for authentic discovery, there would be no ecstasy. In freedom, we experience both pleasure and pain in the process of discovering our identity as beings of both earthly and cosmic dimensions. After nearly 14 billion years of evolution, we stand upon the Earth as agents of self-reflective and creative action who are engaged in a time of great transition and conscious learning.
3. Deep Meaning & Feeling: If the universe is dead at its foundations, then, in its depths it has no feelings for us as human beings nor does it offer a sense of meaning and purpose. Because a non-living universe is unconscious at its foundations, it is indifferent to humanity and unknowing of our evolving creations and conditions. Nothing will ultimately matter to non-living matter. All will be forgotten. An old saying goes, “A dead man tells no stories.” In a similar way, “A dead universe tells no stories.” In contrast, a living universe is itself a vast story continuously unfolding with countless characters playing out gripping dramas of awakening. Could the essence of learning embodied in countless life stories be remembered within invisible or non-material ecologies of our living universe as well as passed along to enhance the field of intelligence on behalf of other cosmic systems blossoming within a larger multi-verse?
With regard to feeling, how we experience ourselves within the surrounding universe has an enormous impact on our approach to life. If we are indifferent and unconscious to the miraculous cosmos we exist within, then our life-experience and reality will often collapse down to the scope of our everyday lives—and a socially constructed existence that is deeply disconnected from conscious connection with a living universe. Or, if we regard the universe as dead at the foundations, then feelings of existential alienation, anxiety, dread, and fear are quite reasonable. Why seek communion with the cold indifference of lifeless matter and empty space? If we allow ourselves to drop into life, won’t we simply sink into existential despair? However, if we live in a living universe, then feelings of subtle connection, curiosity, and gratitude are understandable. We see ourselves as participants in a cosmic garden of life that the universe has been patiently nurturing over billions of years. A living universe invites us to shift from feelings of indifference, fear, and cynicism to feelings of curiosity, love, awe, and participation.
4. Natural Ethics: In a non-living, bio-mechanical cosmos, we are existentially isolated entities whose being stops at the edge of our skin. In turn, it is rational that our scope of ethical concern would not extend much further than ourselves, our family, and others on whom we depend for our well-being. In contrast, a larger scope of ethics can emerge from an intuitive connection with a living universe that provides us with a “moral tuning fork.” We can each tune into this living field and sense what is in harmony with the well-being of the whole. When we are in alignment, we can experience a positive hum of well-being as a kinesthetic sense that we call “compassion.” In a similar way, we can also experience the dissonant hum of discordance. When we are truly centered in the life current flowing through us, we tend to act in ways that promote the well-being and harmony of the whole. When we discover that we are part of the seamless fabric of creation, it naturally awakens a sense of connection with and compassion for the rest of life.
5. Sustainable Living: In a dead universe, consumerism makes sense. In a living universe, simplicity makes sense. On the one hand, if the universe is unconscious and dead at its foundations and each of us is the product of blind chance among materialistic forces, then it seems fitting that we, the living, exploit on our own behalf that which is not alive. If most of the known universe is lifeless, then it has no deeper purpose, meaning—or value. If we are separate beings in a lifeless universe, there are no deeper ethical or moral consequences to our actions beyond their immediate, physical impacts. It is only natural, therefore, that we focus on consuming material things to minimize life’s pains and maximize its comforts. How do we know we “matter”? By how much matter we have in our lives: a big house, a big car, a big bank account, and so on. In this view, the more matter we have the more we must matter. An alternative view is that, if the universe is conscious and alive, then we are the product of a deep intelligence that infuses the entire cosmos. We shift from feelings of existential isolation in a lifeless universe to a sense of intimate communion within a living universe. If life is nested within life, then it is only fitting that we treat everything that exists as alive and worthy of respect. Every action in a living universe has ethical consequences that reverberate throughout the ecosystem of the living cosmos. In turn, the search for a meaningful way of life shifts from a desire for high-consumption lifestyles that distract us from an indifferent, non-living universe, and toward simpler ways of living that enable us to connect more directly with a living universe of which we are an integral part. In a living universe, it is only natural that people would choose simpler ways of living that afford greater time and opportunity for connecting with the aliveness of the world in meaningful relationships, creative expressions, and rewarding experiences.
In conclusion, as a provisional paradigm, a living systems perspective brings with it a transformed description of our cosmic identity, purpose, meaning, consciousness, and ethics as well as a compassionate concern for sustainable ways of living. These are of immeasurable value to humanity as we seek to grow consciously through a time of profound planetary transition and come together to build a promising species-civilization.
Dear Sandy!
It is so wonderful to see you, and your work, on the network! The trailer is fantastic, and we can hardly wait to see the film.
We will soon be working toward getting a showing in Vermont, where there is great traction with, and attraction to this phenomenal theme.
And I just got a message announcing the Kosmos Seed awards. Here is their website: http://www.kosmosjournal.org/
Another wonderful ‘documentary’, The Journey of the Universe, was primary inspiration for the Emergent Universe Oratorio.
We would eventually love to do a film on the unfolding project and the amazing impact of music (and of course, IMAGES!) on our individual and collective psyche toward becoming (as Thomas Berry said) ‘mutually enhancing members of the whole Earth community’.
Dear Sam,
Thank you so much for your kind words! We would love to help you organize a screening in Vermont. If you have questions about that process, please don’t hesitate to reach out to JD Marlow, my Co-Producer. I’m not quite used to sending/receiving messages on this platform yet, so if you communicate with him, it’s better. His email is [email protected]
Thank you for sending the Kosmos Seed Awards as well – I’ll put that up on our social media platforms.
Warmly,
Sandy
Dear Sandy,
Congratulations on your phenomenal film. What an important, timely subject! The trailer—with its compelling images and script—is superb! I look forward to seeing SEEDS OF TIME in NYC. I hope it will motivate people to awaken to the realities of climate change, and make the necessary changes that face us all. I forwarded your link to a friend who is writing a YA book about Seeds, and will email your co-producer w a suggestion for a fab film venue in New York. Thank you for your extraordinary work!
Warm regards,
Imogene Drummond
http://www.divinesparks.com
Thanks for this Sam! Making the translation to action is what has to happen!
Thanks again for a fascinating newsletter. The System-Environment Coupling piece is terrific. Many thanks Jim!
A first quick reading: Fabulous draft summary of the overwhelming challenge of understanding the dynamics of the Grand Narrative of the foundational ‘reality’ of the Universe, the two great tides understood as ‘objective’ and ‘integral’, with their multiple and interpenetrated streams and levels of influence. It goes without saying, yet it must be said, that there is ‘considerable flow’ among the lineages, and that the ‘imperfection’ of the ‘species metaphor’ is mostly due to the far greater mutual interchange in the ‘noosphere’ than in the biosphere. The importance of the great task of developing a deeper and richer understanding of the approaches to a science-based origin story cannot be exagerated, nor the importance of each ‘approach’ appreciating the evolutionary necessity of the others.
Thank you Jennifer for undertaking this important and difficult task. You have done a remarkable job. It is very valuable to name the different lineages and to identify their loyalties. I have a question related to your undertaking. I would like to show a brief video (may 20 minutes) with good diagrams and pictures that tells the New Story but I find David Christian’s TED talk too exclusively in the objective lineage and not adequate to what we are understanding, in my judgment. Can you recommend a similar video that is based in one of the integral lineages? Swimme’s Journey of the Universe would work but it is too long for my purposes.
Responding to “Origin Stories” Essay by Jennifer Mogan
By Duane Elgin
Jennifer: I appreciate your wide-ranging essay on “Origin Stories” describing the universe, its origins and evolution, as well as how the human journey fits into this big picture. I found that I could identify with and relate to many of the titles and names that you gave to different stories. Because they did not clearly differentiate one story from another, I found them interesting but more confusing than clarifying in revealing differences. Although there are different emphases and nuances among these stories, the differences seem more distinct than is suggested by such a wide range of names and titles. I’m wondering if there are a few differences that would enable us to make a stronger and more useful distinction between different paradigms? To suggest such an approach, I’ve also included just below, a one-page draft that seeks to describe core differences between/among these different origin narratives. As background, I’ll also include some biographical information as well as publications in this area.
–WORKING DRAFT ONLY–
DIFFERENTIATING UNIVERSE STORIES/COSMOLOGIES (Scientific Materialism Versus Living Systems Approaches?)
1. ALIVENESS AT THE FOUNDATIONS: The universe is a unified system that is itself, fundamentally alive. “Aliveness” has been a property of the universe from its very beginning.
(OR)
The universe is non-living at its foundations, comprised of non-living matter and empty space, so what we call “aliveness” is an emergent property of the universe that arises at higher levels of material complexity.
2. CONSCIOUSNESS AT THE FOUNDATIONS: The universe has a knowing capacity or consciousness that fits with the form and function of systems at every level. From the atomic level to the molecular level and on up the chain of life, we find a reflective or knowing capacity that supports systems as they self-organize.
(OR)
Consciousness or a knowing capacity only emerges when material systems reach a high level of complexity—essentially when they have a central nervous system and some form of biological brain.
3. CONTINOUS CREATION: Creation is not a one-time process but a continuing process. We live in a universe that is being continuously recreated in its totality at every moment. A holo-dynamic creation.
(OR)
The universe arose nearly 14 billion years ago and creation ended with the big bang
4. SELF-ORGANIZING PURPOSE: The purpose of the universe is revealed in its architecture: torus as the simplest geometry of self-organizing systems. So its central project is to grow self-organizing systems at every scale.
(OR)
The universe has no apparent purpose; there is no “central project” or intention.
5. ECOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS: There is an ecology of consciousness that connects all that exists in the universe. Consciousness provides both an expressive and receptive capacity to which we have acces
(OR)
Materials beings are essentially separate and not connected with one another except through material means/processes.
6. ?
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION AND PUBLICATIONS
You also asked for further background information concerning the “living systems, co-evolutionary” narrative that I offer. (This seems much more descriptive than calling it an “Integral” view.) Below is a bit of history regarding my involvement with this area of inquiry as well as resources in the form of books, articles, and videos. I hope these are helpful in describing my interest in understanding the nature of our universe and humanity’s evolution.
BACKGROUND EXPERIENCE:
For more than 40 years, I have been exploring the living systems nature of our universe. Scientific work in this area began in the early 1970s when, for nearly three years, I was a subject in a wide range of scientific experiments exploring our intuitive capacities (I spoke to no one about this for roughly twenty years). See, for example, the book: “Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability” by Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff, Delacorte Press, 1977. I was one of four primary subjects in the earliest explorations of “psychic” abilities regarding our intuitive connection with the universe in studies conducted at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) in the early 1970s. The earliest studies were public and prepared for NASA; for example, “Development of Techniques to Enhance Man/Machine Communication,” Stanford Research Institute, Contract 953653 Under NAS7-100, June 1974 and “A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer Over Kilometer Distances: Historical Perspective and Recent Research” by Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ and published in The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 603PR004, 1976. Over a three-year period, I explored both the receiving potentials (e.g., “remote viewing) and the sending potentials (e.g, “psychokinesis), of human beings and gained first-hand experience of the ecology of consciousness infusing our universe as a living, regenerative system. I dropped out of the research program when it was classified as secret and was taken over by the CIA (freedom of information requests indicate that it continued for another 20 years under their auspices).
Based upon these years of laboratory experiences combined with decades of meditation experience (primarily in the Tibetan Buddhist traditions), as well as extensive research and writing on changing paradigms with scholars such as Joseph Campbell (see the report “Changing Images of Man,” written in 1974 and published as a book with the same title in 1982 by Pergamon Press)—since 1981, I have been writing about the universe as a living system and the profound implications this paradigm has for the human journey.
Overall, my explorations of this theme have ranged from: 1) first-hand scientific research, 2) study and development of a scientific cosmology describing the universe as a living, regenerative system, 3) exploring the co-evolution of culture and consciousness through human history, 4) the nature of the universe described in the world’s wisdom traditions, and 5) how a living systems paradigm is profoundly relevant to our manner of living more sustainably on the Earth.
BOOKS AND ARTICLES:
“East-West Synthesis: The Source of an Emerging Common Sense,” Chapter 10 in the book by Duane Elgin, “Voluntary Simplicity,” 1981. An early exploration of the great value of the living systems paradigm that brings together views of East and West. This exploration continues over the next three decades into new editions of this book. See: 3rd edition, 2010, Chapter 6, “Deep Simplicity and the Human Journey,” where I explore the implications for our manner of living if we regard the universe as a living system.
“The Living Cosmos: A Theory of Continuous Creation” an extended, scientific essay on the theory of continuous creation cosmology in the journal,” ReVision,” 1988. This theory proposes that the constancy of the speed of light at the local scale is a by-product of the precise consistency of continuous creation at the cosmic scale. See: http://duaneelgin.com/wp-content/uploads/1988/03/Living-Cosmos-ReVision-Journal.pdf
“Awakening Earth: Exploring the Evolution of Human Culture and Consciousness,” New York: Morrow, 1993. This book is based on the premise of the universe is a living system and explores the implications of this view for the co-evolution of human culture and consciousness. Also explored are the stages of human development in our awakening to and connection with the living universe as well as the “dimensional cosmology” that provides the scientific underpinnings to this co-evolutionary view.
“We Live in a Living Universe,” This is a chapter from my book, “Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity’s Future,” Morrow, 2000. It offers an overview of the universe as a living system. See more at: http://duaneelgin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/we_live_in_a_living_universe.pdf
“The Living Universe: Where Are We, Who Are We, Where Are We Going?,” San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler, 2009. This book explores the nature of the universe as a living system as seen through the lens of both science and spirituality and then explores the implications of that view for human identity and evolution. This is Duane’s most comprehensive description of the living systems paradigm and its implications for the human journey.
“Contrasts Between a Dead and a Living Universe,” a chart taken from my book, “The Living Universe,” 2009. See: http://duaneelgin.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/DeadUniverse_LivingUniverse.pdf
“The Universe as a Living System: An Interview with Duane Elgin,” Chapter 14 in Cosmic Conversations: Dialogues on the Nature of the Universe and the Search for Reality, by Stephan Martin, New Jersey: Career Press, 2010.
“The Double Life of Thomas Berry,” A chapter by Duane for the book, “Thomas Berry: Dreamer of the Earth,” Ervin Laszlo and Allan combs (eds.), Inner Traditions. 2011 This chapter explores the intersection of the horizontal dimension of Berry’s work (the evolution of the universe through time) and the vertical dimension (the emergence of the universe in time as a living, regenerative system). See: http://duaneelgin.com/the-living-universe/#sthash.SvwMZOiR.dpuf
“Living in a Living Universe,” a blog on Huffington Post. 7/16/2011 See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/duane-elgin/living-universe_b_862220.html
“Deep Big History: A Living Systems Paradigm,” An essay presented at the second international conference on Big History that 2014 that offers an overview of the scientific foundations for a living universe perspective and then considers the important implications of this perspective for human meaning, purpose, and sustainable living. See: http://duaneelgin.com/the-living-universe/#sthash.T03Nmnxd.dpuf
VIDEOS:
“The Universe as a Living System,” a short video where Duane Elgin describes the profound differences in whether we regard the universe as dead or alive at its foundation. 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkty1AfO9c8
“The Living Universe,” a short video summarizing Elgin’s views and introducing his book by the same name, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3n_ZrHBxeU
“Science and Spirituality,” a half-hour video conversation with the scientist, Peter Russell, and Duane Elgin exploring the common ground of these two great paths of knowing, 2010. See: http://duaneelgin.com/videos/#sthash.2U3CuHBI.dpuf
Thanks so much Sam and Mary for your comments. There’s much more coming for the paper on Approaches. Yes, this is a crucially important task, as you said so well Sam. Mary, a short film you might consider is the Neal Rogin film, Awakening Universe — http://www.awakeninguniverse.com/about_neal.html
Jennifer
Thank you for doing this….I await the more detailed version. My comments will be from the perspective of cosmology and ‘where’ we stand when ‘teaching’ and the languages we use appropriate for that space. Where we are standing (eg in our families, in our schools, in our work and in our recreation) calls for a specific language -academic, therapeutic, homiletic. More later……
The best film I have found Mary, is exactly the one that Jennifer refers to….It is 18 total minutes and perfect. I use it all the time and even this afternoon am going to use it…It sets up the issue of cosmology perfectly (which is my little nitch) and then any subject can be undertaken in relation to that following the film. It honours the fourfold wisdom -science, religion, tribals and women. Today a neighbourhood group nearby wants info on Earth Democracy (a lecture that could not be programmed when DTJ Pat Siemen was here). ED is not my area of expertise but it will give people an idea that our laws are currently from a perspective of life (cosmology) which is dysfunctional, and there are emerging movements around the planet looking at laws from an integral perspective. GM food trials have just been initiated in our state and am trying to get folks motivated to learn more and join the resistance movement. What has happened here with the BT cotton is a sin. The interiority of the seed is not being honoured.
Language represents, and evolves along with, one’s own understandings, perceptions, and story. Arguing over ‘living’ and ‘dead’, or pushing those terms too hard, can lead to dogma and resistance instead of respectful communication, acceptance and learning. What this raises for me is the question, “How can I reconcile my objective scientific-model paradigm/story with my deeply felt personal experience of interconnectedness/’life in everything’?”
Thanks for your comment Traci. What language would suggest to contrast between regarding the universe as a living system and a non-living system?
Hey, check out our 18 second book trailer! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9Tyck37klw
Thank you Kyle for assembling this chart and I love the name ‘Big History as Connective Tissue’
It both is our connective tissue and about our connective tissue- and a crucial gift wrapped in tissue we ‘teachers’ offer to generations to come…embellished with what else they find!
Orla,
Thank you for your comment! I have to say that the “connective tissue” metaphor is David Christian’s, so I can’t claim any creative responsibility for that. However, I find it to be an extremely accurate image to convey the purpose of Big History. I will soon be posting a link to the video in which David Christian uses that very metaphor, so be on the lookout!
Thanks again,
Kyle
I haven’t seen the original article Jennifer posted. I look forward to the revision to the next. Mary Coelho and I have been in discussion about the various versions of the story of the universe as told by various people from various perspectives and we are still working with which is best. We have come to agree to tell the story in many ways.
Christian tells it from science POV and Rogin tells it from Berry’s roots. Christian is the so-called objective line while in fact we know that even the “objective” is colored by the teller as much as the “integral” manner is.
There are others telling the story. Each narration has aspects that are influenced by the teller’s personal perspective and sense of the story and background. Each narration has been edited to tell those points of the narrative that are salient to the teller’s POV and telling. Each of the narratives has edited out some aspects of the U story. Even the telling of the “science” story picks and chooses events to relate, uses language and metaphors and similes that are comfortable to that person’s style of telling. I am thinking of Christian’s use of the Goldilocks metaphor to describe the not too much nor too little of aspects of the Universe. I am thinking of Swimme’s use of “unfolding” and a balloon to describe similar phenomena. Anyone who doubts this need only to set up a Cosmic Walk ritual like exercise and be confronted with what points on the Walk will be included and what left out.
I have observed that even the language we use to discuss these narratives is influenced by us and our own bias, prejudice, beliefs, or simply tastes. In the above comments I see that while one is more sympathetic to Christian’s telling, another finds Rogin’s as “perfect.” I submit that none are perfect, that all have value, that all tell important aspects of the Universe’s story, that all should become familiar to us, that all should be told and retold many times until we are all very familiar with the U story’s important data and their implications for us. Much like a puzzle or a mosaic the picture is enhanced by the various pieces to create a whole reflection. No story is the reality. The map never is.
So, I am wont to tell the story again and again and again from many complementary points of view. I want it told for children too as through the Everything Seed, and Born with a Bang which both tell it a differently and well but will need retelling later in the humans’ development, and to evolve a deeper understanding of the story.
Thanks so much for your comment Brad. Yes, I will get a new version up again within the next two weeks. I’ve been traveling and giving teacher trainings. Everything you said in your comment is so right out about the filters and the different stories that emerge depending on what we focus on. I don’t know if you know about my second two books — From Lava to Life and Mammals Who Morph — which tell the later parts of the Universe Story. You may want to to check them out. Will be in touch soon! And thanks again for your comment.
Thanks for posting Brian. Indeed, we are stars!
I still believe it essential that we work on coming to some agreement about fundamental assumptions in science as the essential basis for our definitions work. In the two international symposia I co-convened on this topic, no one even suggested that science could be done without such assumptions– a basic set of statements conceptualizing the universe to be investigated scientifically and how it can be so investigated (statements that are by definition unproven, but ‘obvious’ by agreement).
This is a critically important matter, since this foundation of science both suggests and restricts what can be hypothesized. Unfortunately, it is given little and vague attention in science education, especially since the contextual philosophy of science is scarcely taught at all any more.
In the first symposium, the participants were self-identified as paradigm shifters, and each of us first listed the assumptions (or axioms) we were taught in the course of getting our PhDs. We ended up with some 176 overlapping but differently worded assumptions which we eventually reduced to the ten we agreed were most essential. We then repeated the process with the assumptions we had put in place of those we were taught (some diametrically opposite, such as
a) Consciousness is a late emergent property of material evolution
b) Consciousness is the source of material evolution
The second symposium was held for Islamic scientists to list and come to agreement on their fundamental assumptions in Islamic science. (Note that both Western science and Islamic have strong roots in Arabic science.)
science (the one claiming to be the only science
I still believe it essential that we work on coming to some agreement about fundamental assumptions in science as the essential basis for our definitions work. In the two international symposia I co-convened on this topic, no one even suggested that science could be done without such assumptions– a basic set of statements conceptualizing the universe to be investigated scientifically and how it can be so investigated (statements that are by definition unproven, but ‘obvious’ by agreement).
This is a critically important matter, since this foundation of science both suggests and restricts what can be hypothesized. Unfortunately, it is given little and vague attention in science education, especially since the contextual philosophy of science is scarcely taught at all any more.
In the first symposium, the participants were self-identified as paradigm shifters, and each of us first listed the assumptions (or axioms) we were taught in the course of getting our PhDs. We ended up with some 176 overlapping but differently worded assumptions which we eventually reduced to the ten we agreed were most essential. We then repeated the process with the assumptions we had put in place of those we were taught (some diametrically opposite, such as
a) Consciousness is a late emergent property of material evolution
b) Consciousness is the source of material evolution
In the course f this symposium we recognized that very different sciences could b built on very different sets of fundamental assumptions, and shifted our thinking from paradigm shift (replacing one set of assumptions with another) to parallel sciences, even the possibility and desirability of a Global Consortium of Sciences. (Note that ‘paradigm shifters’ including those in this group, got their fundamental assumptions mostly from Eastern Vedic or Taoist sciences.)
For this reason, a second symposium was held for Islamic scientists to list and come to agreement on their fundamental assumptions in Islamic science. (Note that both Western science and Islamic have strong roots in Arabic science.)
As things stand, Western science claims to be the only science and gets away with it by insisting its fundamental unproven assumptions are the only reasonable ones possible. In a globalized world, this is no longer tenable.
Kyle,
Have you ever used Brian Swimme’s Powers of the Universe at the secondary level. It’s a terrific way for students to personally related to the larger context and see the powers within themselves as the same powers within the universe. Carol Kilby and Daisy Radigan, DTJN members, did a program in a Catholic high school in which they put a spiral on the floor and put the powers inside of boxes. Carol dressed up as Mama Universe and opened the boxes, explained the powers and how they relate to the students. It was a big hit. Here’s the link on Amazon. I need to put this resource on the Network since a classic being used by many.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Powers-Universe-Brian-Swimme/dp/096503657X
Jennifer
Beautiful. Many thanks. I do believe that, but neglected to mention it in my “Becoming” blog — which I shall update before adding to DTJN!
Thanks for posting this worthwhile article. I love the way you connect awe with experiencing the universe as the primary source of awe, and as a foundational context for education, Jennifer. I agree with you whole-heartedly!
You’re welcome Imogene! So important . . . and Awe is so often missing from the classroom! Our students endure hours of boredom when learning becomes easy if presented in such a way as to evoke awe.
A new understanding of the universe seems to be emerging from the sciences: instead of regarding the universe as comprised mostly of dead matter and empty space, evidence increasingly suggests it is unique kind of living system. This is NOT to describe our universe as a “biological” system but rather to say that it is infused with consciousness and seems to have properties attributed to living systems. In turn, a living systems perspective transforms our sense of identity, purpose, meaning, and ethics. These are of immeasurable value as we seek to move through a time of profound planetary transition and build a promising species-civilization.
I just love this. And I thank you.
I’m so glad Diana! Thanks for your comment!
You’re so welcome Imogene and Diana. It’s of crucial importance and so central to what this site is about . . . not just the transfer of information but also fostering awe, a foundational emotion that increases cooperation, and further . . . a thirst for knowledge and even zest for life.
Thank you very much for adding this article and you are absolutely right that todays schools do not foster wonder and awe. Even with learning the story/big history…if the contemplative wonder is not honored, if the subject is just more facts- what are we really doing? Where is the Joi de vie…the sensitivity to life and all its expressions? Lakota member Ronald Goodman sums up our predicament perfectly by stating:
“As long as the discourse remains mainly secular and merely scientific-I think it is doomed. I mean if it doesn’t kindle us up to singing , if it doesn’t quicken us to dance, to gratitutde and praise- what kind of knowledge is it?”
I discussed this predicament in the philosophy of pedagogy in my thesis you can download from the deep time journey site. I was interested in evoking and honouring particular somatic senses which we do not cultivate and because we do not cultivate them we have the ecological issues, the social justice issues and the spiritual alienation and anomie that are a sign of our times. Like Montessori, Unitarian Religious Educator Sophia Fahs, (1876-1978) whose students regularly wrote to Einstein, wrote a lovely piece in 1960 for the journal Religious Education. Titled “The beginnings of mysticism in childrens Growth” She contested dualism/secular understandings of existence and popular understandings of mysticism. Unfortunatly these understandings of mysticism and then linked with wonder and awe are still the popular understandings of mysticism. Here is an exerpt from that article and on pg 170 of my thesis…the statement is a critique of these popular current understandings of ‘religion’ also… ‘Mysticism means communication with the supernatural. The mystic is presumed to be one who obtains knowledge of this supernatural realm by means of some divine revelation. A mystical experience is assumed to be something inherently different from natural experience–a gift of Gods grace (fahs 1960 pg 3).
Through our efforts of introducing communities to our deep time journey together we are contradicting these understandings and retrieving
a somatic sense that the natural is super and a huge mystery!!!
” . . . we are retrieving a somatic sense that the natural is super and a huge mystery.” Thanks for saying this Orla. In prior times, supernatural usually meant a world outside the natural world, but the growing sense now is that what we formerly called supernatural is a natural part of this wondrous evolving universe. Thanks!!
Dear Ursula
Greetings from Mumbai
Thank you very very much for posting this article of yours. I am going to go through it with a ‘fine toothed comb’ not unlike the combs I see women using each morning, as they wake up on the streets and comb their long hair to take out the bugs. The weather here is now unbearable as are these daily sights and I hang onto the hope that nuanced ways of telling and understanding our common heritage will evoke other ways of being together. Crucial for us is this word ‘religion’- it sets off all kinds of alarms and rightly so, considering how the term is used and practiced. When I was writing my thesis on cosmology (world view- cartesian vs integral…it is on this site for download) I wrote that cosmology was inherited and was intergenerational, international, interinstitutional and intrareligious. Gabrial Moran had used for the fourth-interreligious and I still struggle with ….is it intra or inter. …because at the root of our cosmology- we consider ourselves either integral (bound- religare) or dualist and the expression of that understanding/cosmology is then reinforced through daily life practice in our families,schools, work and recreation settings. For me the understanding is the key- there are so many ‘religions’ in India as well as indigenous ways. the indigenous people share an integral cosmology which some of us are only now coming to through our shared deep time journey. The popular expressions of ‘religion’ across the various expressions of them is dualist- there is some ” diety” and it is is elsewhere and life is tolerated to get to the ‘elsewhere’. We have a long long way to go..but it is happening. Will write more when i read your article…long live poiesis!!!
This is fantastic! Thank-you for sharing.
Dear Ursula!
Thank you from the bottom of our awe-filled and wonder-full hearts for writing and sharing this fantastic piece!! I can’t wait to read it, but have skimmed enough to have made that statement.
I am sending you a new compilation recording of the Emergent Universe Oratorio with the new recitatives, now set to more lavish music, with deep gratitude for your generous and inspired editing. Evolutionarily yours, Sam
Really cool!
This is very good. I am actually looking for this in a more static and traditional form such and a paper roll time line on which I could make these major events and lay out various examples of as many eons and events as I can. So, for example, I have collected meteorites for the beginning of the solar system, fossil stromatolites, etc. that I would like those looking at the line to hold and time about deep time represented within each. I have been to school supply stores and online searching but nothing has turned up. I might have to make my own. Does anyone have a time line that it much like this but one I could use as described?
Awesome! Thanks so much for that terrific resource! Knowing those facts is one thing. Seeing them this way — e.g., barely finding the line for humans — makes another kind of impression. Congratulations!
Thank you for this lovely account of your relationship with Thomas Berry and you observations about him. I feel that I have a better understanding of who Thomas was.
Kudos, Kyle, on your inspired and inspiring work! Your article is terrific! I especially like the clarity with which you address the need for relevance in our lives and the way Cosmic Education addresses and fills that need–particularly for teenagers. The students’ comments are phenomenal. Your article gave me chills. Thanks for sharing. Keep up the Great Work you’re doing! I hope your essay will result in Cosmic Education being taught in more schools.
Thanks for taking the time to read the article, Imogene! I really appreciate your feedback, and I’m glad to hear that it’s not just me who feels so moved by my students’ responses. When I first tried to read them to my wife, I couldn’t make it through without getting choked up. So powerful. I also hope we can get Cosmic Education taught in more schools, but I especially hope we can get more Montessori schools to go past elementary and take the leap into the world of secondary. Teenagers need a Montessori environment just as much as children do! Thanks again for taking the time to share your comments.
Love this article, Mike. Many thanks!
Thanks for this … Great point that the Pope has written as a geologan not a theologian … And what would the world be like if more people saw them as one and the same
Terri and Jane,
Thanks for your comments. I really do believe that Pope Francis has given us a new approach to climate change. The one additional thing we need is an awareness of a “clear and present danger.” For those of us living on the West Coast of Canada and the U.S. the combination of drought and forest fires may be the motivating force we need. Thomas Berry’s “Great Work” seems to mean that we must all become Anthropocene triage workers, We must seek resilience in our changing systems be dedicated to viable transitions–Mike
Mike, as a new member to this community I treasure this intimate sharing of Thomas Berry. I can better understand him as a Shaman than as a theologian or geologian. Perhaps again because of the intimacy and grounding between human and earth.
About your article on the encyclical, I’m about to read it. I’ve been very moved by it and have read every word – no summaries! I look for responses to it from other faith groups. This even includes a Hindu response. How wonderful. Alliances may be forming. Let’s hope so.
Laura,
Thanks for this. I too am a new member and look forward to this new community of dedicated and concerned people. There will be a lot of controversy over the encyclical but to many of us it is a breath of fresh air. Francis is indeed the pope we have been waiting for. .
What a gorgeous remembrance! How fortunate you were to know him so intimately! I read your tribute with a smile on my face and tears in my eyes. Thank you!
Jane, I would like to send this film to Susan Conlon, head of youth services at my public library in Princeton, NJ. Susan also heads a successful environmental film festival at the library – 2016 will be it’s 10th season. I’d like to copy you in the email. What would that be? They often Skype in producers and co-producers to follow a film. And, I love the main title – Stories for a Better World. Maybe the library will borrow it for their next theme!
Laura Hawkins
Hi Laura,
Jane and I must apologise for only now some 2 or 3 years later seeing your comment! It’s a bit of a long shot, but If you are still interested in showing the video, we are very open to that and will try our best to communicate better.
Best Wishes,
Rod
Dear Mike,
I just had a chance to sit quietly and read your commentary on the encyclical. Again I felt like you were, in part, giving us another “insiders” look at the Pope and his encyclical. I really liked the way you took us directly to the Popes “problem” of addressing climate change and that this 6th extinction is human caused. The rest just rolls beautifully through eons, your own local/indigenous experience, and the call for a new consciousness. Thomas Berry’s take on earth as “better self” might just be a next “favorite quote” for the profile page.
To everyone, I’m so impressed and moved by the quality and heartfelt power of your work. I love that Jane’s “On Being a Bee” involved young people as co-producers. More and more I feel the importance of reaching out to young people. But, this isn’t for the usual “educational/informational” process, even at it’s most creative. There seems to be a sense of urgency to let them find each other – those who can connect to the earth and to each other in new community. This is my own aha moment which I’m sure you’ve all already had on this deep time journey..
Lajura,
Many thanks for your comments. I’m glad you enjoyed it. .
Terrifc! Thanks for this Terry.
Was deeply moved by this short video — truly inspiring to hear and see this creative response from young people. Great job!
Hi Brian,
Many thanks for your words of encouragement and support. So glad you found it inspiring! We are trying to make the work as collaborative as possible…………since we see that “collaboration” is one of is key elements of the larger story.
Cheers,
Rod
This is wonderful! I love how Jeff Boxell connects the universe story with story-telling, art, and spirituality. It’s delightful to hear Jennifer Morgan’s enchanting “Born With A Bang” read aloud. Wearing a cosmic NASA cape, Jeff whimsily sparks connections between nature, art, and religion!
Thanks for the kind words Imogene. Already making plans to incorporate the readings into 3 separate children’s “workshops” for the children at our UU church. I plan to craft a “character” for each reading building on the cape theme I used for Born With A Bang. I will be sure to share.
Many thanks Terri, this is indeed a great service, and much appreciated.
Mary M.
Thank you, Mary, for your positive comment! All blessings!
Thank you, Orla, for this very inspiring and hope-giving paper! Just think what could happen if all Jesuit institutions took your lead! (And then all other institutions!) Congratulations, and may the metanoia experienced by your students be a meaningful reward for all your efforts! It’s had a positive effect on me.
Excellent!
Many thanks Jim!
Thank you for this valuable essay. The wisdom traditions you describe are very helpful as we try to articulate the wisdom in the story of the evolutionary universe and the associated discoveries of science in the recent couple of centuries.. A “New Story Group” that I belong to has read Cynthia Bourgeault’s book The Wisdom Way of Knowing and found that helpful as we seek to embed ourselves in the evolutionary universe story. I wonder if you have reflected on the work of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme from the perspective of your knowledge of wisdom traditions. Their work it seems to me is seeking wisdom in the emerging evolutionary worldview.
Dear Mary, Thank you for responding to my short article. I hope to read Bourgeault’s book. She comes highly recommended by you and a few others, and I will soon catch up with you, I hope, in reading Berry and Swimme. You are way ahead of me.
Do get in touch with me if you have any thoughts to share coming out of your New Study Group.
Do you find them comforting? Do they raise questions that make you wonder if time is on our side,from an evolutionary perspective?
Please keep in touch.
Thanks again for writing,,Dick
Mr. Fenn,
Thanks for this very interesting article. It struck all kinds of responsive cords. I’ve spent much of my life working with indigenous peoples in the Arctic. The concept of a natural theology and a revelatory universe is still very much alive with them. In many respects this is much of what we re trying to regain. On a number of occasions Thomas Berry noted the need to rediscover some of the elements that we disparagingly refer to as “paganism.”
The references to a holistic concept of earth and the links of the human soul to the Earth Soul seem to relate both to Pope Francis’ reference in Laudato Si to an integral ecology as well as the references from quantum physics about non-locality, time/space and so forth. And, as you pointed out in your introduction the references and concerns about death that we often label as superstitions seem much more relevant today as scientists are seriously talking about the Anthropocene, climate change, and a potential Sixth Extinction. Finally, having just finished a book that speaks about St. Columba and Iona (John Philip Newels Rebirthing of God: Christianity’s Struggle for New Beginnings) I had a deja vu experience. It is interesting that we are re-discovering the things from earlier times that we moderns thought we just came up with.
Very nice article. Thanks for sharing it.
Mike Bell
Dear Mike,You are capturing that strange pair of feelings and convictions that links to an archaic world: a sense of deep connection to a universe that is always far beyond us, was there before us, and we hope will be thereafter us; and yet also a deep uncertainty about whether time is on our side, or whether our last remains will be washed away.I suspect you have looked hard and long at the water-stones that cover Neolithic tombs. They are huge, enduring, and have been hauled from miles to cover a sacred place, and yet the stones them,selves show the effect of water passing over them, at their original site, over many, many years. They endure and erode.
I share your conviction that we have much in common with them, and I am amazed to find Columba sensing that at its heart, the universe is on the side of our relationship to whatever it is that gives life to and permeates the cosmos, temporary and precarious as our existence is.. And I have much to read to catch up with natural theology. It is not the old debates about revealed vs natural theology that interest me but the whole question of whether our preoccupation with time is a sign of some deficiency in our sense of our own being.
What are you writing about time?.
Like you I have read some of Newel and been grateful to him for his response to the Celtic. Do you think Newel is equally alert to the reassuring and anxious elements in the Christian Celtic tradition.
Have you been writing -or have you long written – about your work with the peoples of the Arctic?
Let’s keep in touch.
Thanks for your letter.
Dick
Hi Dick,
Thanks for your comments. In response to your questions, I’m not writing about time directly but do write about time in relation to cosmogenesis. As Berry and Swimme have noted “We are moving from a dominant spatial mode of consciousness where time is perceived as moving in ever-renewing seasonal cycles to a mode of consciousness where the universe is perceived as an irreversible sequence of transformations.” (The Universe Story p. 223) This new consciousness is essential in dealing with the Anthropocene.
For my work in the Arctic “time” has played out in hermeneutics. When Inuit and Dene experienced significant events in time (contact with the white man, fur trade, wars, rifles and skidoos. etc.) we see the emergence of a hermeneutic circle. I’ve worked with the Tlicho (formerly known as the “Dogrib”) in the Western Arctic for many years. They refer to their earliest mythic times when people and animals could speak to one another as “floating time.” They refer to the initiation of the residential school system in the early 1900s as their initial “Time of Darkness.” The broader context for this hermeneutic is Berry’s observation that “The universe is the only text without a context.”
I’m really not knowledgeable about Newell except for his Re-birthing of God book. I noted one of his references to Columba: “He spoke of Christ as his “Druid.” This was his way of radically affirming the relationship between Christianity and the ancient nature-based wisdom traditions that preceded it in Ireland and throughout the Celtic world” (pg 44). I know very little about Celtic spirituality but I love the concept of “thin places.” I have one—a forest with lovely trails in my neighbourhood.
I’ve done a great deal of writing about my experiences in the Arctic but they are scattered throughout various talks I have given—particularly a series of six talks on the Anthropocene I gave last winter.
As you may know I was a Passionist monk for a dozen years and for four of those I was a priest. Two of those years I lived in the same monastery as Thomas Berry. In the last ten years of his life, a couple of times each year I went down from the Arctic or later from Vancouver Island to spend a few days with him. My moment of grace (to use one of his terms) was when his teaching linked with the teaching of Inuit and Dene elders to “learn from the land.”
I’ll be 77 on December 8. I’ve decided I want to focus my remaining years on climate change—my effort to translate Thomas Berry’s concept of a functional cosmology into action. So I usually do this through talks and story-telling followed by activism in the community. I value the research that is being done. It is essential. But, in my opinion Thomas’ functional cosmology has been locked up in the world of academia. So I’m trying to build a bridge between the teachings of the indigenous elders and the New Cosmology and translate basic concepts into plain language for folks in the community. (Even here I’m following TB’s lead. One day, after giving a talk, a man got up and said, “Father Berry, don’t you think it was arrogant of you and Brian Swimme to write a 300 page book entitled The Universe Story without a single footnote.” And Thomas responded, “Oh C’mon. It’s only a story. Homer didn’t use any footnotes.”)
In terms of my writings, a couple of friends and I have formed a small group. I’ve been working on our new website. It is still in a rather primitive form but it will give you an idea of what I’m doing: http://www.comoxvalleykeepers.ca. I’ve produced most of the material. There are two writing that may be of particular interest. One is a cultural review project I organized and wrote for the Inuit elders in Nunavut shortly after the creation of Nunavut. I did it as a consultant so my name doesn’t appear. You will find it under New Consciousness—Indigenous Perspective. The second is entitled “Inner Consciousness” It deal with Shamanism and Jung. You will find it under “Recent Posts” on the right hand side of the main page. Hope you enjoy them.
Thanks again for your article. Let’s stay in touch.
Mike
Dear Mike, Thank you for responding. Sorry to delay in responding to you. In the meantime I have had a chance to read your creful and evocative work on functional cosmology, and it is much on my mind as I am responding to you now.
I am also aware that you are 77, and that you know declining systems when you see them, and that you may be living in a valley on one of those declining systems, and that you want to do something about that. But I am not sure that that is your context. It is certainly where you are, but I do not have a sense as yet as to whether the island is where you are living, moving, and having your being.
So my first question is: Where would that be?
You are drawing on Berry’s comment that the universe is a text without a context. So the context seems to be up to us?
So I am asking, Mike, whether the context, for you, is spatial (where you are), or some frame of reference or interpretation (that hermeneutical circle to which you so aptly refer), or is it the time or the moment you are in?
Behind this question is your very interesting reference to the floating time of the Inuit, where other animals ad we could communicate with each other. You are also trained in communications at Wisconsin. And you see your mission with Berry’s, as communication: telling the story of the universe.
So is the context you are in the one you are creating through communication, wherever and whenever it is that you are communicating? Do the Inuit create – or remember their creating – their own context through communication with other non-human beings?
Interested as you are in framing and re-framing, you probably remember Erving Goffman’s work on that subject. All I remember is that when you and I are speaking to each other we may have a wider audience in mind. I hope that that is not the case here. I hope I am just asking you, but it bothers me that others, at my request, might read this, and to me that means that I am not being as authentic as I wish.
If I were just talking with you, and we were talking about sharing the dream story, I would be writing to you alone.
Shot of that, let’s go back to your ideas on responding to and acting in declining systems.
I would really like to know, given your advanced years and all, and the state of things on the island, whether you feel that you are in r have already passed the summer solstice.
In asking you this I am trying to find a place in some earlier experience where people faced together what I face, night after night, in my dreams.It is getting late. I have dreamed such dreams,off and on, for many years, long before I became old.
The connection with the solstices tells me that the story of the universe permits me to feel, even in these dreams, some primordial connection with the cosmos.
But I also know that there is another solstice coming and that I live – and maybe others live – between these times..
I am asking you about your sense of time. About how you root your sense of time in the cosmos. About whether your sense of time is bittersweet or double coded. About what you do between winter and summer solstices, as well as between summer and winter solstices.
I know from your work on the island and among the Inuit that you do not care much for the times set up by social systems. These times inevitably interrupt the hermeneutical circle that you cherish, help others to see and create and invite us to live in together.
I imagine that you have little liking for fiscal years, academic years, budget years, deadlines, scenarios and predictions designed to produce commitment and compliance to government and organizational mandates. You are clear that you want these system-made times to learn about dream-times and floating times and the time that is running out on life among the people you love.
So, Mike, I would really like to know how you experience time. Are you on the upside or downside between solstices, or are you living in an on-going critical moment, is it time running out or is it getting late, or is there another kind of time in which you live and move and have your being?
How do we – how do you – live in the mean-time? How do you cope with the interruptions to the hermeneutical circle?
This letter could be another one of those, but I hope not.
My hunch is that we are working on the same project of finding a sense of time, cosmic time, that can be functional in everyday life, with all its discontinuities, strains, artificial frameworks, urgencies, and impending finalities.
My hunch, also, is that we might together want kto find a way that people can claim and create and live and move and have their own being within their own temporal frameworks and the cosmos that embodies and sustains them..
Thanks for introducing me to some of your work.
Let’s talk, when you have a moment.
Every blessing to you and those you care for,
Dick
Hi Dick,
Thanks for your response. It raises many questions and it would take me a long time to answer all of them. So let me focus on the one I think is most significant—my concept of time.
My concept of time has been strongly influenced by four things—my relationship with Thomas Berry and his thinking, my work with indigenous cultures in the Arctic and my interest in both theology and communications. I think of time as an essential element of a larger context. I don’t see myself living “in time” as much as I see myself living “with time.” Here are some of the elements of that context.
The Universe. Berry’s concept of the Universe was strongly influenced by Teilhard de Chardin. He believed that the universe was both a physical and psychic/spiritual reality from the very beginning. Because it was a living realty in time it was also revelatory. For Berry, Human intelligence was the universe reflecting upon itself. I suppose the beginning of the Universe was also the beginning of time—though I’m not sure which came first.
Earth is also revelatory. Berry noted, in reference to context, that if we lived on the moon we would have no sense of the divine or any concept of a munificent being. In one of my earliest meeting with him I told him that that people in the North were interested in a Spirituality of the Earth. I asked him if he had written anything on the subject. He paused and said that he hadn’t. But then he said to me, ‘I have written something on Earth Spirituality that you might find interesting. I think for Berry human spirituality was an extension of Earth ‘Spirituality—the anima mundi. We are earthlings developed through evolution over time.
Cosmogenesis. We tend to live in a spatial time—the changing seasons, night and day, etc. All religions arose in the time of the Holocene—a period of great stability. We fail to realize that we are now also living in historical time-a time of fundamental historical transformations that are continuing to change life as we know it. A dominant characteristic of historical time is its cosmogenesis—an on-going creative force. Earth and the Universe are continually changing, giving birth to new experiences and revelations.
The Anthropocene To my knowledge Berry never used the term. But he continually talked about the reality. We live in a highly destructive time. There has never been a time of such destruction since the time of the dinosaurs—26 million years ago. The Anthropocene, emergent out of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19thCentury and gained a head of steam (in term of carbon pollution) in the middle of the last Century. Climate change is in the process of changing everything.
The Universe Story. Often, after one of his talks, someone would ask Berry what they should do. He would say—“tell them the story”. He was referring of course to the Universe Story. The essential aspect of a story is time—it has a beginning, middle and an end. He often noted that the challenge in our time, among other things, was to accept the Great Work of our times—to save Earth by means of “story and shared dream experience.” (Interestingly, Berry was a cultural historian and he wrote his doctoral dissertation on Giambattista Vico’s history of human-kind based upon time sequences: the three distinct ages of gods, heroes and men.)
The New Story. Berry often noted that, in terms of time, we are in between stories. In terms of the challenges facing us the old story is no longer relevant. But the New Story (influenced by modern science) has not yet been developed. It is our role to help develop it. Another name for the New Story is a functional cosmology.
Moments of Grace. Another time reference. Berry believed that down through the ages of history we have been given “moments of grace” to deal with the realities facing us. But they are temporary. He noted that we are receiving another one now.
Hermeneutics. Though I never heard Berry use the term his whole life seemed to be an interpretation of the contextual reality in which he found himself. He frequently stressed the need to get beyond the written texts and to rely on the primary living revelation—the living text of the Universe that was continually revealing itself to us. (Thus his suggestions that the Christian churches put the Bible on the shelf for twenty years.) The interpretation of the “text” of the universe, in turn leads to a metanoia and action. (the hermeneutic circle)
Counter-Culture. In my work in the North I often felt that I was walking between cultures: the Inuit and Dene indigenous cultures on the one hand and the pseudo Euro-Canadian cultures on the other hand. As I’ve noted in a previous post, all cultures seem to be located in time sequences. But today we are living in a carbon colonialism with its market fundamentalism. The challenge is to create a viable counter culture: to stop doing harmful things and start doing beneficial things—and to create a sense of hope. I’ve always liked St. Augustine’s comment about hope. “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”
My work. As I noted in an earlier post, it is to develop a functional cosmology wherever I live. Today this is in the Comox Valley which is halfway up Vancouver Island in British Columbia on the West Coast of Canada. In doing my work I’m very aware of my aging process. Though I’m relatively healthy I experience the usual ailments of aging. A while back I read this quote from Gandalf to Frodo at a time when Frodo was encountering some difficulties. “Frodo, the only decision we have to make is what to do with the time that is given to us.” It touched me deeply.
Dick, I know that all this may be jumbled. No one has ever asked me how I thought of time. But I think of it as part of a larger context. These elements somehow create my time-context.
Mike
Fantastic Kyle! There’s going to be a lot of interest in this! Jennifer
Photograph is of Cameron Davis’ painting “Eaarth Rise Amen” from her Endless Spring Series of the Emergent Universe Oratorio.
Hey thanks so much for adding this important article Brian. Why don’t you make a post on the Forum topic “Is the Universe a Living System?” and refer to this article. The people in that thread would be very interested in this piece.
Hi Mike –
Also thought Ms. Sideris’s article quite interesting but also recognize that trying to address the evolution of human cultures and all of the side affects we have on the planet is very difficult to accomplish in relatively short articles. This debate of how humans need to evolve based on a story is obviously quite old – we have been telling stories for an awfully long time – and unfortunately the relative truth of any story (what I have come to call the Fog of Truth) is always questionable which also must include the human tendency to find stories that fit our own current understanding of truth, correct or incorrect, in order to confirm our current beliefs. I can’t quote directly the source but I have a vague recall that within Thomas Berry’s works he stated that what we need is new language. I believe that but the real challenge is how to present these stories to any given audience based on their level of understanding of what can be claimed as the truth. Telling stories to children, or rational adults with open minds, or religious fundamentalist audiences all require extremely different approaches. The difficult with science is that it represents an evolving story and we need to be careful how we present any explanation of reality to be sure that we clarify what is based on evidence as opposed to conjecture (new theories). What is most important which Deep Time Journey is trying to achieve is that this is an ongoing dialog within an evolving understanding. Human change is an inexorably slow process. And then we have to hope we survive as a species fast enough to minimize major suffering!!
Thanks for you comments – Rich
Hi Rich,
Thanks for your response.
I agree with your comments about the difficulty with stories. Part of the problem is that our culture sees stories as unreal: either made-up fairy tales for children or imaginary stories on television–soap operas, detective stories or tales of derring-do facing walking zombies.
I’ve had some experience working with indigenous people who have a very different concept of story.
There is a story about a First Nation (tribe) in Northern British Columbia that wanted to begin working on its land claim. The band council and some elders were meeting with federal civil servants who came to their community from Ottawa to begin the negotiation process. At one point in the discussions a federal civil servant, working through a translator, noted that the land in question belonged to the federal government in Ottawa. This shocked the elders whose ancestors had inhabited the land for centuries. One of them got up, looked across the table at the federal civil servants and said, “If this is your land where are your stories?”
On numerous occasions Thomas Berry noted the need for a different language to explain the new realities. He also noted the need for a very different concept of story—one akin to the indigenous concept that could be the essence of an Ecozoic culture—a new story that would provide a new context to help us see a radically changing world in a different way and give it meaning. It is a monumental challenge and requires a major shift in consciousness. This is the point I was trying to make in my previous comments about Lisa Sideris’ article.
Recently I can across a comment of someone speaking about climate change—a civilization problem that is changing everything as we have known it. He noted, “We are not living in an era of change. We are living in a change of Era.” We have passed from the Holocene Era to the Anthropocene Era. We need a new story for a new era.
Thanks for adding this Jim. Fred Adams in Spain and Geoff Ainscow in California, DTJN members, have been working on developing this app. Looks like it’s coming together!
Yes, this is a marvelous adventure. This project is opening a new creative field around the original concept of Walking Audio Books. Now that we are at a few steps to finish the programming of the engine, i am expecting to give birth to more walking audio books to experience space and time scales with the body and the mind at the same time. A lot of ideas around the corner and happy to listen also to the inspirations of the community, what would you like to walk in time and space ? (pro.gpsmuseum.eu)
I LOVE this focus Terri!
Terri, I loved the way you took us back in time through the usual mother’s day nurturers – not this – not this – to the stars. I guess the last time I imaged being so nurtured by a star was when Tinker Bell waved her magic wand! Then, on to the surprise – “we ARE the missing link”. I hope to remember that one when it’s needed. And, much gratitude for your Pope Francis and his encyclical – read every word.
Our crowdfunding campaign is open, go to deeptimewalk.org to pledge. We need £20K to complete the app.
It is a breakthrough educational experience, a walking audio history of Earth, which will be available to everyone anywhere in the world. The user walks 4.6 km (4.6 billion years) while listening to an engaging conversation between ‘the scientist’ and ‘the fool’ (the truth teller) narrated by two Shakespearean actors and produced by a skilled BBC drama producer. Our plan is to publish the app on Apple and Android platforms in the Fall. We will much appreciate your pledge.
An authentic humanity, calling for a new synthesis – YES!
I hope you get fully funded. Please put up reports in the News Feed (Activity) about your progress!!
What a gorgeous site Betsey and fantastic insights into the essence of flowers and their relationship–emergence out of–place. Please do post some of your blogs on DTJN as well, just as Terri MacKensie does as well. Thanks for your love of flowers. So inspiring.
Thank you so much, Jennifer. Discovering Terri in one of your Resource emails brought me not only the joy of reading Terri, but the inspiration to share posts with your amazing community.
Thanks so much for posting this Traci!
Synchronicity! Just revelling in this book which I’d picked up from a local library and feeling I’ve read it before. Then realising through this post that I’d bought it on Kindle. Not having the hard copy somehow lessened my memory of it, but not of its content. Now there’s a metaphor for the ‘within of things’! Without the material version, the ‘spirit’ of the book is somehow less accessible! At least to my une loved memory set! Love the book and feeling thoroughly nourished by it again! Thanks, Jennifer.
So glad Di that you feel nourished by it. I do too. It’s one of these books . . . in reading it I feel that someone is giving voice to thoughts I’ve had for a long time! Great synchronicity indeed Di!
Jennifer
Dear Kyle,
I very much enjoyed reading your article ‘A Match made in Science.’ It provided much food for thought.
I don’t know much about Montessori education as I’ve taught in English state and a private (non-Montessori) school. However, I empathize with your approach, as I understand it, that although Montessori’s Cosmic Education was for 6-12 it can be fruitfully adapted to the 12+ years. It seems you are finding Big History a really useful tool to provide a scientific objective foundation of the origins and development of the Universe, Earth and Life. From this firm and sound basis the children can be encouraged to make judgements, shape attitudes and find meaningful relationships to Life. As you say, ‘Montessori can pick up where big History leaves off.’ That sounds great to me!
In a similar vein I would love it if Big History also made an adaptation of their content for 6-12 year olds (this is the year group I teach). However, I feel in this regard, Jennifer’s books are brilliant at providing many of the scientific facts in a child friendly manner.
That being said I feel (Jane and I will present on this in the DTJN programme later in the year) there is also much room to bring Modern Myths into the classroom arena that are based on the latest scientific findings. This way, I feel, we have the best of both worlds – Myth and Science combined. Science to satisfy the logical mind but also myths to engage our emotional, moral and spiritual dimensions of being.
Wishing you all the best in the classroom.
Rod
Rod,
Thank you for your response. It’s always nice to hear feedback, especially from people outside of Montessori. Regarding your comment that you’d love to see Big History for elementary, it’s my opinion that Montessori has already done the groundbreaking work – long before Big History – for this plane of development with Cosmic Education. If you’re interested in learning more about the philosophy and practice of Cosmic Education, you should read To Educate the Human Potential, as I think this is her most important explication of this theory. I know you said you’re not teaching in a Montessori school, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t pull from her teachings and incorporate them as you see fit.
I’m eager to see your webinar about myth and science. Particularly, I’m curious to see how you define the word “myth.” Thanks again for taking the time to read my article and then to comment on it, and I’d love to hear more about your school and teaching experience sometime.
Best,
Kyle
Hi Kyle… It’s a wonderful study you wrote, that inspired me a lot in several respects, even though I differ with your political view towards the cause of what you call “terrorist” attacks.
I agree with you that Big History, even though it lacks a kind of “meta-materialistic” guidance or purpose, it furnishes a first base for education across all civilizations to have a common origin & history story, to start breaking through national & religious prejudice that is ingrained within current History & Religion subjects taught in schools, to start building a global human identity in children.
The problem is we have to make sure that this meta-materialistic guidance that could be complemented by Cosmic Montessori does not waste away this new-held potential within BH, to make sure that this guidance doesn’t play a disguised role that does more or less the same as current national education curriculum – that is, to guide the mass of children into adopting a specific moral, theological, or political view (that is adopted by the majority of the community), & even worse, that this view is favored over other competing views of other communities (like the quotes you’ve mentioned for Wilson).
Also, it is still place to wonder, that even if children & adolescents are provided an unbiased philosophical guidance that transcends all specific metaphysical views of the world, is this enough to bring up children who could potentially change the world into a much better one than the current conditions we suffer in, if those same children are – aside from the school – live within economic, political, & cultural conditions that work in the opposite direction that BH & Cosmic Montessori strive to make humans direct their common path towards? For ex., children being separated in education between poorly-qualified public schools & highly-qualified prestigious private schools according to the “financial-prestige” acquired by their parents (needless to mention, the huge economic & social differentiation between children in developed & developing countries) – is a condition that “teaches” children that it is “natural” to have people living in high-quality conditions, who hold more power over others in low-quality conditions, & that this power is only attributed to the “material” amount of money one gathers up, which works as a reality-check against any attempts of morally guiding children in schools on a theoretical basis!
Thanks Kyle for this thought-provoking study…
Fantastic Kyle! I hope you shared this with the Big History Project too! You can always send them a link to this site so they can see the pictures and read your narrative, as well as other resources.
Noha,
Thank you so much for taking the time to read and respond so thoughtfully to my article. I also see that you signed up for my webinar! Thanks for that, too.
Your concern about the limitations of a peaceful cosmic curriculum within a larger world of economic, political, and social injustice gets right to the heart of the matter. It’s important to keep in mind that the scale of this Work is so huge that we cannot expect to “fix” our ills in one or two or even three generations. This is a long-term vision of gradual changes, with each generation making greater and greater inward progress. It’s also important to stress that the goal is not a utopia in which all people always behave ethically (if such an objective standard even exists) and peacefully. It seems to me that a cosmic perspective reveals to us a truth understood very well in eastern philosophy, namely that the universe expresses itself through a duality (most famously represented by the yin yang principle or the concept of “mutual arising”). So, creation can only be understood in comparison with destruction, life can only be understood in terms of death, and indeed, peace can only be understood against the background of violence. Thus, it is not realistic to expect that Justice for All will be achieved. Rather, the goal is to progressively minimize the expression of violence and injustice in the world and maximize the expression of peace and justice.
Now, to the point of Big History or Montessori education playing a “disguised role,” I hope that a closer reading of my article will show that Big History in particular wants to assemble a purely scholarly understanding of the universe and earth and life and humans without making any claims – explicit or implicit – about how our big history ought to be interpreted or used to convey a particular worldview. Fred Spiers in particular is very clear and adamant on this point. Now, with Montessori education, the situation is admittedly a little more ambiguous. After all, the primary goal of Montessori education is to effect the inward progress of man and promote a more peaceful world. So, although we promote free-thinking, celebrate cultural diversity, and invite dynamic discussions from many different viewpoints, if a student (mis)interpreted the cosmic curriculum to suggest that he should destroy life and treat people with disdain or even with violence, then yes, as Montessorians, we would strive to help correct what we would consider a dysfunctional attitude toward the external world. Again though, as Carl Jung so wisely explained, humans are neither angels nor demons. Rather, just like every other duality in the universe, we possess both light and “shadow.” So again, we’re not trying to make children into perfect angels; instead, we are attempting to help nurture their innate light so that it not be overcast by the shadowy aspect of our duality. These children eventually grow up into more “enlightened” adults who shed greater light into the world and raise more enlightened children, and so in this way, with each generation, humanity makes a little more inward progress, and our “shadows” don’t stretch quite so far.
Finally, I have to say I’m not sure what you mean that you disagree with my “political view of what [I] call ‘terrorist’ attacks.” The quotes that you put around “terrorist” seem to imply that you have a different view than I do of what would constitute terrorism, so I must not have been very clear in my articulation of this term. In my mind, anyone or any group that kills innocent people, whether in the name of religion or racism or ethnocentrism, or homophobia, or any other “cause” is a terrorist, and such heinous crimes against humanity have absolutely no conditions whatsoever that excuse them. I do hope we can agree on that point.
I should also like to reiterate that any act of terrorism carried out in the name of religion is a “perversion of religious spirituality.” In other words, such acts are committed by lunatics, not by truly religious people. Again, I hope we can agree on this point. I don’t see this as a political viewpoint at all. To me, it’s a humanitarian viewpoint, one that begins from a true love and respect for all people and all beliefs. Herein lies the flaw of sectarian religions, though, which Wilson acknowledges: the very idea that people outside of one’s religion are somehow “wrong” or “less than” or not in the Higher Power’s favor introduces division and possibly (as we see in the examples of extremists) violence toward people outside of that religious “in-group.” This is why sectarian religion, on its own, cannot unite humanity, as it draws a circle that does not encompass every human being on the planet. Only a cosmic perspective includes all of us and reveals our shared ancestry and our shared fate on this planet.
That doesn’t mean that religion is bad or should be banished. In fact, as I stress in my article, religion can elevate us in very important ways, but sectarian religion will have to evolve to incorporate the all-inclusive perspective that Cosmic Education offers. In other words, we need both science and religion, but both of these approaches to understanding our place in the cosmos will have to bend and be willing to learn from the other side to achieve a more resilient and powerful “New Story.”
I hope that helps clear up any confusion you may have felt after reading my article, and thanks again for your comment. I hope you find upcoming webinar equally thought-provoking.
Best,
Kyle
Great to see the youthfulness and enthusiasm here, but I kept wishing folk in the picture would move away so that I could see their exhibits. Inspiring, even so, thanks.
Thank you Kyle for your again thought-provoking reply 🙂
I agree with you that we cannot expect to reach a utopian organization of the world that doesn’t include a duality of good vs. evil. But as you said, we have direct the inner progress of children (through the added philosophical guidance framework suggested by Cosmic Montessori) toward maximizing justice, & minimizing injustice, & not just that… I think also children should be directed toward being greatly dissatisfied with revolutionary tendencies against the current framework of organization ruling societies across the world right now (including the so-called democratic ethnocentric “nations”), because this “international” organization, makes, what we might call evil or injustice, the basic common rule of the day (ex., the greatest influence & power in the globe given to arms & wealth-monopolizing corporations), while actions of justice are very weak & with no widely-spread effect as wars, wealth concentration, & racism/nationalism (ex., compare the power of human rights organizations & environmental movements, say Amnesty International, to the power of arms corporations — I don’t think the word compare is even applicable here to dizzying difference of power between the 2 sides)…
So even though both sides could exist in the world, but in our world right now, we need huge radical change — turn the whole system in the world upside down “literally” speaking (even if gradual through generations like you say), to make this huge power difference goes the other way around between justice & injustice!
(P.S. My Master’s thesis deals a bit with this, as it reviews the possibility of applying a gradual change of the political culture of young Egyptian generations from a traditional towards a civic one, to find alternative sustainable long-term solutions for changing the system in Egypt, after the failure of its 2011 revolution).
I’m currently reading in Big History, so I still didn’t read in Cosmic Montessori, & I agree with your point of guiding a child who might express a dysfunctional attitude. But, because this guidance might be subjectively interpreted by a teacher in a way that doesn’t apply that multi-diversity & transdisciplinary approach of Cosmic Montessori (ex., a children expresses a tendency toward a certain metaphysical view that a teacher holds a subjective bias against, & interprets as dysfunctional); so I think that clear articulated education frameworks should be developed specifically for the purpose of guiding teachers in their philosophical education for children, in a way that equips the teacher to provide a transcendent unbiased evaluation of all cultural, religious, & metaphysical views that emerged throughout history, in a way that brings up a global human identity in the child that doesn’t bound itself within the limits of a specific religious & cultural view of the world (& this is not an easy task, considering that both teacher & child would have to resist their cognitive & psychological temptations to conform with the dominant views within their surrounding society).
As for terrorism, yes, I differ with you, because I think its major cause is the huge political & economic power difference within & among states in our current international system, not religion at all, yes, religion is only used as a justification or psychological reasoning for one’s desire to make such an act, but the true underlying cause is this power difference. I shy away from calling the nowadays so-called “religious” groups’ acts as terrorism, because those groups are on the weaker side of the power structure in the world. On the other hand, terrorism is majorly committed by the other stronger side, namely, state military & security institutions across nation-states (especially the barbaric but publicly unrecognized terrorism committed by army institutions of so-called developed nation-states against the peoples of so-called developing nation-states). The defensive violent acts of those non-state-recognized groups are only blind reactions to the offensive terrorism committed by state institutions (& incomparable in scale to the violence committed by states).
I definitely agree with you (& Wilson’s) approach toward theology… that, like the new BH approach toward science & world history, a new theological framework should be developed, not only to make a match with science & BH, but also to develop an all-encompassing view of the relation between human & the Universe/Allah/God, that doesn’t hold exclusive divisions between groups or individuals of different beliefs, such as the divisive properties that current organized religions hold. And even though this is part of the solution in building a new educational framework for bringing up children with a new global human identity who could change the world, I think that a huge part of the solutions, is how to revolutionize their little souls to strive toward breaking current political, economic, & social systems that are based upon the unequal division of power…
Noha,
I encourage you to read some of Montessori’s work because it will allay your concerns about a Montessori teacher viewing a different cultural belief as dysfunctional. Of course, there will, in any institution, be people who don’t hold themselves to the exacting standards of that institution, but to truly qualify as a Montessori teacher means not imposing one’s “subjective biases” onto children. That’s an integral component of what Montessori calls the spiritual preparation of the teacher, and it’s one of the key features that separates Montessori philosophy from the traditional approach.
I understand your point about power and wealth disparities in the world, but one point that we will have to agree to disagree on is what constitutes terrorism. It would be a glaring form of subjective bias indeed to say that murdering innocent people is not terrorism but rather just a “blind reaction” from victims on the weak side of a power structure. Murdering people will never stop the rivers of blood from flowing, nor will it create a balance of power in the world. And it certainly doesn’t matter how justified one side feels in its violence because the truth is, both sides will always feel justified because so many atrocities have been committed already in both directions.
From a Montessori perspective, militarism, whether from a “developed” nation or a “developing” one, only hurts the whole of humanity. She writes in Education and Peace, “The impoverishment of one nation does not make another nation richer; rather all nations decline. Destroying one nation is tantamount to cutting off one hand in the mistaken hope that the other hand will thereby become twice as strong.” So, just as it is self-defeating for developing nations to wage war, so too is it self-defeating for the people of the “developing” nation to commit their own barbaric acts of violence. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. so wisely put it, “Hate begets hate and violence begets violence.”
As I said in my previous post, the intentional murder of innocent civilians is terrorism, and it makes not one whit of difference whether the people committing these heinous acts are Western or Middle Eastern (i.e., on the “strong” or “weak” side of the “power structure”). I think that to excuse such crimes against humanity, or to “shy away” from calling it what it really is, is very dangerous because it is a form of assent, however implicit or indirect it may be. As a united world, what Montessori calls “a single organism, one nation,” we must categorically denounce and condemn all forms of terrorism and war, otherwise, we are certainly doomed to remain caught in a senseless cycle of violence that destroys life, squanders resources, distracts us from truly pressing ecological issues, and maintains the very imbalance of power that you rightly identify as very problematic, all because each side has its own means of justifying murder, whether they be religious, economic, militaristic, or otherwise.
We cannot bomb our way into peace. We cannot shoot our way into peace. We cannot maim our way into peace. We most likely can’t even talk (politicize) our way into peace. Following the guidance of Montessori, I believe the only recourse we have is to educate our way into peace by protecting the inborn wisdom that children possess, which makes it astoundingly clear to them that no matter what state of development your country is in, no matter what atrocities have been committed against your country in the past, no matter the type of religion you or your nation practices, no matter what your political beliefs, no matter whatever categories you impose on people to separate humans into “us and them,” the reality of life is that we are all connected, and so our fates are all intimately intertwined. Again, such truths need not be taught; rather, all that must be done is to avoid corrupting children with our own “subjective biases.”
As Montessori explains it, “When individuals develop normally, they plainly feel a love not only for things, but for all living creatures. This love is not something that was taught; it is the natural result of leading the right kind of life. We might say that if love appears, we are within the range of the normal, and if it does not, within the range of the abnormal…Love is not the cause but the effect of the normal development of the individual…Our hope for peace in the future lies not in the formal knowledge the adult can pass on to the child, but in the normal development of the new man.” In the mind and heart of this “new man,” there will be no place and no excuse for murder.
Thanks, Di! Yeah, I know, I wished the exhibits were more visible, too…I guess you’ll just have to visit Indiana next time we host an exhibition!
Kyle,
I agree with all that you say, especially to protect the innate wisdom of children to bloom of its own naturally, without corrupting it with the subjective biases that adults’ minds hold. But your last paragraph has left me thinking… That children should be left to develop normally in order to bring up a new man who embraces love for everything around him…
What about children here, who are not living or developing in normal circumstances?! Could we actually say that “most” children in the world now are not developing in normal circumstances?
I was once standing in a clash against the police here, & I found so many young poor boys (we call them here street children, who are homeless & poor) standing in the front, vulnerable to deadly gunshots that the police shoot at us. I grabbed one of them, trying to stop him to go to the front, begging him to leave or at least stand in the back, so he wouldn’t get killed. He shouted at me saying “Let me go, I want to die”, & went back to the front. He was only about 12 years. And you know what’s even worse?! I didn’t hold to him or force him to get back, because when he shouted at me this, I knew he was right, if he dies, or perhaps he already died, it would be better for him than the life that awaits him!
Weren’t those groups, whose actions you call “terrorist”, before children who developed in abnormal conditions?! Weren’t they the very abnormal production of the horrifying barbarism & savagery that developed nations’ militaries have been committing in the Middle East for decades?!
One of the billions of heart-bleeding stories of children I got to know, is an Iraqi child whose whole family got killed in one of the American raids on his city, that was back a decade ago, I saw his picture with his 2 arms amputated. He’s probably grown now to be in his 20’s. Would you blame him if he committed what you call a “terrorist” attack & what I call a “blind reaction”?! Wouldn’t it be a subjective bias to condemn his actions & give a blind eye to the savage American aggression that stole away his “childhood” & “normal human development” potential within his existence?!
How could we bring up such a child?! How could we bring up millions of ME children to love their existence & be a force for peace, when their surroundings are mired with war & poverty?!
Or let me say it more bluntly, did the developed nations leave the children of the developing nations to live in normal circumstances, & have a normal development, wherein “their minds & hearts, there will be no place and no excuse for murder”?!
Yes, I’m against militarism in all its sense. I don’t think that any military, security institutions, or any sophisticated weaponry is needed in our future world, hopefully. As those institutions are mainly used for the preservation of the status-quo, & the accumulation of power & wealth with the elite, & not the protection of the public. But in order to fight against the very notion of violence & militarism, we have to be able to analyze events with an unprejudiced view that doesn’t flow with the mass media propaganda, but instead only apply our own human rationality to it…
If a cat keeps biting at a mouse & chewing at it, & the mouse, in reflex, scratches the cat, it would be against sound logic to look at both cat’s & mouse’s actions within the same scale of interpretation. And putting the violent actions of both the aggressor & the victim within the same judgment, doesn’t only stand against rational thinking & human justice, but it will also hinder our own attempts to find & eliminate the root causes of this cycle of violence!
Noha,
You speak of analyzing events with an unprejudiced view, and yet you characterize America as the aggressor (the cat in your analogy) and extremist/terrorist groups as the victim (the purely reflexive mouse)…herein lies your contradiction, which does in fact “hinder [your attempt] to find & eliminate the root cause of this cycle of violence.”
First of all, we are humans, not cats and mice, and as such, we have the capacity to control our actions using logic and reason in ways that the rest of the animal kingdom cannot.
Secondly, your analogy misses the mark because in the situation we are discussing, both parties are aggressors, neither one (as an entity) classifies an innocent victim. But you know who are the victims? The innocent Iraqi families (and Afghani and Saudi and so on) killed or maimed in American raids. You know who else are victims? The innocent American, Spanish, French, and other European civilians murdered by extremists/terrorists (some of them homegrown right here in our own country).
You ask if I would blame the child for becoming a terrorist and killing other people to exact revenge for the wrongs done to him and his family? My answer is yes. I would blame him, I would blame the terrorist group that armed and trained and brainwashed him, I would blame the American raid that killed innocent civilians, I would blame them all because they’re all caught up in a cycle of violence in which everyone feels justified to kill and no one is strong enough to forgive and work toward peace. Everyone can point to senseless murder committed by the other side and say, “You see?!? Look at what they’ve done! How can you blame me for retaliating with a killing spree of my own?” From each parties’ point of view, they are they mouse, the victim who must now stand up and wipe out that evil cat once and for all. It is a contradiction to say, “I’m against militarism in every sense, but America is the root of the problem, so how can you blame these groups that I won’t call terrorists because they’re just acting outing of blind reflex?”
America is not the root of the problem. Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel, and so on are not the root of the problem. As long as we continue pointing fingers at one another, we will surely continue to point guns at and drop bombs on one another. The root of the problem is, as Montessori has explained, the fact that our inward progress has not kept pace with our outward progress, so we live in an extraordinarily complex and advanced physical world with a violent history of grievances for everyone, while our spiritual world is desolate and barren. So yes, I would say that most children in the world – including America – are not developing in the “normal” conditions that Montessori spoke of in which love appears quite naturally. The fact that we still have so much racism, homophobia, religious violence, and militarism in the world is proof of that fact. This is why we need Montessori education in America just as much as it’s needed everywhere else in the world. Just as none of us are innocent victims, none of us stand on a moral high ground, either. The whole world find the humility to accept that we have all lost our way and that the trail of progress can only be blazed by the child, untainted by our prejudices and grievances. We must rally around the child as the teacher, the messiah, the messenger of peace, and follow Montessori’s wisdom by providing a rich environment in which his natural tendency to love can grow and blossom without the poison of violence and blame destroying it.
Kyle,,,
Again I agree with what you say, which you say so beautifully, & sadly – because I know this is not reality – I think that if enough people in the world think like you, it would’ve been a different plant. I hope you’re not angry with me for my, perhaps shockingly different, view towards those groups, but I look forward to you being tolerable to me, because I, myself, am confused & hurt for everything that’s happening around me… Like you, for all the ideals that I hold, but find are shattered & ridiculed, by the unmerciful force of reality!
I want to eliminate a misunderstanding, first that of course I don’t agree of what those extremist people do, & yes, what they do is terrorism, nevertheless, a reaction-, not an action- type of terrorism, & not at all comparable in scale to the terrorism committed by military institutions (just compare the number of victims from the American organized aggression in the ME, & ISIS individualized acts).
“I would blame them all because they’re all caught up in a cycle of violence in which everyone feels justified to kill and no one is strong enough to forgive and work toward peace.” That’s a very beautiful thing, & you’re absolutely right in this. But Kyle, the situation is more complicated than that, because the confusing agent of psychology plays a big role in this dilemma. Neither you nor me can fully understand the situation, because neither of us had his home bombed over him, his loved ones killed, & his body tortured. We don’t know the suffering they went through in wars that made them turn out to extremist groups & commit such actions! It’s very easy for us in our comfy homes, safe environments, around our loved ones to condemn violence, but did we really try to go to the hell-like conflict areas, to live through conditions with those war-victims people, try to understand them, to know why they turn into committing violence as a reaction to what they’ve been through?!
When the American military killed over a million Iraqis, put nuclear radiation in its land, lit a long civil war there that continues to flame our region & darken our lives, what did you expect would come out if this? When ISIS showed up after that, that wasn’t a surprise at all.
Kyle, I want you to understand that I absolutely agree with what you say (whether about letting children bloom in their own protected from our own divisions & biases – whether to condemn all violence committed by all actors, even those who were victims to violence themselves – whether that we’re all connected together, without any natural divisions between us, all the divisions are culturally-constructed illusions). But at the end, we all have to accept that we hold some kinds of prejudices – mainly psychological prejudices. And those prejudices sometimes conflict with our ideals, hopes, & intentions, making us contradictory & confusing, making us humans…
Yes, I know that many children in America & Europe don’t have normal conditions to develop into better humans, but they have a much much better shot at that, because their surroundings are incomparable to the devastating, violent, & poverty-stricken conditions that children grow up amidst here in the ME, Africa, & many parts of Asia & LA. That’s why even my own intended attempt to teach BH to poor children here, I still don’t have any clue if I could target street children with this, they’re around me everywhere, but how could I engage with their poverty-stricken psych, how could I tell them the story of the universe, tell them the story of anything, when their whole mind is engaged with their homeless hungry violent lives in the streets? How could you engage millions of war & poverty stricken children in the ME & elsewhere within the journey of the universe?!
Noha,
Thank you for clarifying your position. I totally agree that I live in the lap of luxury, far removed from the unimaginable reality that you have witnessed and lived through yourself. While that may discredit my philosophy to some extent, I think it benefits me to the extent that I can view the situation with some perspective. Just as when someone wrongs me personally (even on a small scale), I may want to exact revenge, but someone who is not a party to the grievance, someone outside of the conflict who still has clear faculties of logic and reason, can evaluate the situation and give me advice that is not charged with the emotion/psychology of retaliation. I don’t discount the fact that I cannot begin to imagine the reality of experiencing such evil, and I’m sure part or all of me might want to seek revenge should a terrorist, say, kill my family. Indeed, I may be inclined to let hate infest my heart, and I may be tempted to join the growing masses of American citizens who – quite wrongly in my opinion – are developing anti-Muslim/anti-Islam worldviews.
I honestly don’t know how I would feel if my sister or brother had been one of the 49 innocent people murdered or one of the 53 other people wounded in the Orlando club this week by a lunatic gunman claiming allegiance to ISIS. Indeed, being that directly affected by murder in the name of Allah may cause me to sympathize with the call for a ban on all Muslims that is being proposed by our country’s republican nominee, Donald Trump (who, I might add, has a frighteningly large number of people supporting him). I hope, though, that my perspicacity would not fail me, even during such a confusing and heart-wrenching experience. I would hope that my logical understanding that violence and hate begets more violence and hate would allow me to see that we have to seek an avenue toward peace, not double down on discrimination, mistrust, fear, and war. I don’t know, of course, but I hope so.
As far as engaging poor children in your region, I don’t have any authority to offer advice there, either, but I will say that the poor children of Rome were the first children that Montessori worked with in her Casa de Bambini. I really, really hope and encourage you to look into her method. It will be of great inspiration and service to you, I’m sure. Of course, Montessori’s children weren’t mired in violence like yours are, so that certainly makes it double difficult, but they did exhibit many behavioral and learning disorders that were quickly corrected once placed in a prepared environment. Even though the task ahead of you is arguably more daunting than Montessori’s, I hope you remain passionate and determined to help the children in your area cultivate their Love, as they are the most important ones in this whole discussion. You and I can only change so much. The children of today will change the world as the children of the past are changing the world now. It’s just a question of which direction they will take us.
Kyle,
You have to realize that you hold your own prejudices that the social, economic, & political context around you forces upon your psych. Thinking that you are an unbiased observer hinders your ability to understand & analyze the dilemma of violence going on, instead when you lay bare your prejudices in front of you, this would be an important step toward your attempting to step outside the box.
Examples of your prejudices: how you equalize in sequence & scale between the organized mass violence committed by your country’s army & the individual acts of limited violence committed by ISIS; how you manage to describe the ISIS gunman as lunatic & extremist (who’s from Afghanistan, the country that America’s terrorist military has been murdering its people everyday for 15 years now), but fail to do so for American political & military officials involved in this violence (like Trump); how you express your ability to imagine being a victim of Orlando’s shooting, but not say as a father who’s children were bombed to pieces by American warplanes in Afghanistan… You, yourself, are part of the representatively-elected political system of America, you chose your officials who decided to turn our region into a pit of hell, and you paid your tax-money for a military machine that mass murdered children & families by hundreds of thousands; so yes (excuse me for saying this), you, yourself, are a kind of murderer – by representation.
Sadly, Kyle, nobody in our today’s unprecedentedly interconnected world, with its huge & psychologically-smart media propaganda & cultural orientation machines can be, what you say “someone who is not a party to the grievance, someone outside of the conflict who still has clear faculties of logic and reason, can evaluate the situation and give advice that is not charged with the emotion/psychology of retaliation”.
That’s why to have a clearer look at our problems, construct mutual understanding & empathy, & dig through all the cultural & psychological barriers to finally reach the true common ground between us all, we first have to lay our own prejudices in front of us…
That’s why I will lay bare to you my prejudices, to encourage you to lay your own prejudices, & that would definitely foster a better understanding between us both:
1* I feel ANGRY & HURT, because all my efforts (wasting 3 years of my life in the streets in protests & clashes, getting arrested, beaten, humiliated, & nearly escaped death) in the revolution, that failed, have been for nothing. One of the reasons (there are other reasons of course) is the American occupation of Iraq & flaring a huge civil war across the region, that currently engulfs Syria, which stomped the Egyptian people from continuing the revolution & toppling the regime, out of fear of turning into something similar to Syria & Iraq. Needless to mention that our own authoritarian military regime (& others across the region) have formed in the 50’s as a reaction to the formation of the Zionist entity in the middle of Palestine, to so-call protect the Arab masses from the Zionist entity’s expansion in the region, & the regime continues its authoritarian militaristic rule in the name of defense against this nuclear-armed (protected by America) entity.
2* I feel HURT & ANGRY, from all the images, news reports, & stories I’ve been following since the beginning of this wretched century, including women & children (I don’t care much about men) being tortured, raped, murdered, bombed in masses, in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria. They stuck in my memory forever. I’ll tell you only one ex., a report I read more than 10 years ago, about a 14-year old Iraqi girl that was raped for a whole week by American soldiers & thrown naked from their helicopter in the middle of her family’s farm, & then committed suicide. I suffered then (I was yet in my late teens) from a horrible depression episode that kept me in bed for more than a month, imagining myself in the place of that girl. No sooner & the Abu Ghreib photos of American soldiers torturing Iraqis showed up, & that was the start of another depression episode for me.
3* I feel JEALOUS, of people in the West enjoying conditions around them that give them the chance to live like human beings, in clean welfare satisfying self-achieving happy conditions, conditions that I only dream & pray to Allah that I could live in, in Heaven after I die (if Allah & Heaven exist). And the only time in my life where I thought I had the chance to transform conditions around me to be like in the West (the revolution) was blown up, & America was one of the reasons it blew up (like I mentioned above).
4* I feel HURT, PERSECUTED, & LONELY, when I read news sites & comments all over the internet, filled with hate-speech & name-calling against Muslims, that I feel AFRAID to take part with my own comment. I also feel HURT how the whole world engages & sympathizes with victims when a few dozen people are killed in the West, & turn a blind eye & a stone heart to the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the ME because they’re Muslims.
That’s, to be brief, some of a whole of confused psych of feelings, that I hope to deal with & lay rest in peace.
Noha,
Unfortunately, it seems that our conversation has taken a turn, and I regret that it seems we cannot have a productive dialogue. I am not angry with you, please know that, but calling me a murderer is deeply offensive and reveals an underlying lack of respect for me as a human being independent of the decisions my country has made and is making. Though I do cast a vote for my elected officials, they don’t always get elected, and not one of them so far has asked me personally whether I want my tax dollars spent on our military machine (which I don’t), nor have they consulted with me on air strikes or military campaigns, though if they do, you can be sure I will emphatically advise against them. To revile my character based on my nationality is the VERY sort of prejudice and misunderstanding that divides our world now and allows hatred to seethe and spread. Some Americans do the exact same thing in regards to Muslims, and no matter which direction such generalized condemnation gets directed, it disturbs and saddens me.
I would also like to rebut, though it probably makes no difference, that I never claimed to be unbiased, as all of us are products of our culture, for better or worse. I was only trying to say that I understood why people directly affected by violence would want to lash out in revenge. I understand why, given the horrendous things you’ve experienced, you might be inclined to justify or perhaps rationalize retaliatory violence. As I said, I may well have the same reaction, which is why we can’t rely on that retaliatory attitude to show us the most logical and advantageous course of action we ought to take because, in the words of Gandhi, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
Moreover, I think anyone who murders innocent people is a lunatic, whether that lunatic be American, French, Afghan, Egyptian, Martian, whatever. Such a human being (or alien in the case of the Martian) is not rational. And while the Orlando gunman’s dad was Afghani, he was actually American, born and raised, so my condemnation of him has nothing to do with where he comes from; nevertheless, the insinuation that because his family is from such a worn torn place his actions are somehow less egregious, perhaps even justified, is disturbing to me, and it’s a position that I cannot sympathize with.
Also, just for the record, I think Trump is not so much a lunatic as a whiny, narcissistic, ignorant, petulant man-child, and I desperately hope that my fellow countrymen have enough common sense not to vote him into office. If for some inexplicable reason they do, though, my next biggest hope is that the world does not condemn all of us for it, because there are legions of us who shudder at the thought of such a leader.
Finally, my eyes are not blind, nor is my heart stone, and if you knew me, if you could see past my American nationality (and perhaps my gender, since you “don’t care much about men”) and see me for the human being I am, then you would know that. Nor am I alone. Yes, some Americans hate Muslims and want to ban them from our country and wage war on them. Many other Americans, like myself, are disgusted by and even ashamed of this attitude, so it’s not as simple as saying that Americans do not sympathize with the plight of the Middle Eastern world, or that Americans support the military actions that have been taken in that region of the world.
Noha, what you’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis, I can’t imagine. I truly admire you for trying to make a difference in a positive way, and even though you say you failed, you haven’t because the very act of standing up for peace is a success, and I hope you continue to fight for the children and protect their “normal development” insofar as that is possible in such circumstances as you find yourself. I would apologize for the unconscionable atrocities committed by some of my country’s soldiers, but that would be a pathetic gesture, so I will just say that I categorically condemn their behavior, and it makes my stomach turn that such is the representative image of America in the Middle East. I can assure you, though, that those sick lunatic soldiers do not represent all American soldiers, and they certainly do not represent all Americans.
In closing, I will say that I have learned a lot from you in our ongoing dialogue, and I’m sure I could learn a lot more if we understood one another a little better, but it does seem to me, as I said at the start of this comment, that the tone has changed. I’m interested in having conversations based on mutual respect with people of different cultures, life experiences, and opinions, and while it seemed we had that at first, I don’t feel respected after your last post. Nevertheless, I sincerely hope that you have taken something positive away from our conversation, as I know I have.
Best Wishes,
Kyle
Dear Noha,
I’m deeply grateful to you Noha for baring your anger and hurt in this conversation, as difficult and disturbing as it is for us to hear about atrocities committed by our own country supported by tax dollars that we paid.
Your effort to reach for mutual understanding by expressing your prejudices is courageous and comes from a yearning to speak truth. I hear you and believe you. We don’t hear this side of the story in our news media but for little glimmers. The horror of so many thousands of innocent women and children being slaughtered by American forces doesn’t get through. I have never heard the story about the woman being raped and thrown from a helicopter. The images from Abu Ghraib I have seen. I cannot even imagine the horror it must be to see your people treated this way. Bernie Sanders has been the one voice in the campaign speaking the truth about the horrors of invading Irag. He voted against the US going into Iraq, which turned out to be so disastrously destablizing for the entire region.
Your hurt and anger are totally relevant and completely within bounds of the story of the Universe. When Thomas berry says, “We are a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects,” he’s talking about the importance of subjectivity . . . the importance of understanding that each thing/being/person has a within that’s valuable and contributing to the evolution of the whole. To objectify and deny the importance of the within is contrary to what we’re about. Your feeling count and a hugely important. Maria Montessori talked about all innovations in evolution being preceded by someone imagining them. Our interiority is of utmost importance. That’s why your feelings count in the bigger story. What are we yearning to create? What world do we want to live in? These desires are drivers of evolution.
It has been so troubling to me in all of the recent news coverage of terror attacks that no one asks the obvious question: Why are people so angry to be driven to kill people?
Your voice, your anger and hurt, and the anger and hurt of others subjected to these horrors do not make it onto the news. We don’t get the subjectivity, the within, of the people living in the ME. They are objectified in our media. It’s so easy to focus on the lives of the people lost in this country. Far easier message to “sell.”
I was deeply involved in the Philippines during the time of dictator Ferdinand Marcos who received support from the United States. For 20 years people were tortured and killed by Marcos—including friends of mine—while the media said nothing in the United States. Marcos was hailed as the darling of America in Asia. It took years for the truth to get through about Marcos.
Your voice is so hugely important Noha. Thank you for sharing your picture of the world.
Please do also be patient with us since we need you to tell us what you see. We’re not getting the full story here.
With gratitude and admiration,
Jennifer
Noha,
There’s more I want to say…my reaction to your last post was reflexive, and I’ve thought a lot about it since I commented this morning. The truth is, your perspective matters to me, and it deserves to be heard. It needs to be heard, especially those of us in America who denounce the heinous acts that some of our soldiers have committed. You are a living witness to what must be the most divided, complicated, war-torn region in the world, and as such, you have invaluable insights to offer anyone who really wants to know the truth, however hard it may be to hear, about our military’s behavior and impact there.
The way I see it, if you and I can’t have a productive conversation about this situation, then who can? You and I want the same thing. We come from different countries but share the same human values. We have to be capable of helping each other come to a more robust understanding of our political relationship so that we can better serve the cause that we both share.
You asked me to lay bare my biases, and that was a fair thing to ask, since you did the same. Mine are much more simple than yours, though:
1. I am white
2. I am a man
3. I am American
4. I am “middle class”
Basically, I come from privilege, and I have never known discrimination, oppression, poverty, hunger, persecution, or any other of the hardest trials of existence. I contemplate the world’s problems with relative safety and comfort from afar (with the exception of the possible election of Donald Trump, who I forgot to describe as also a misogynist and a bigot), and I give some but little thought to how much my own country has done to generate the kind of extremism that now threatens us.
Please accept my apology for not hearing you more fully and honoring your perspective. I do admire your passion and strength of will in the face of such unimaginable brutality. That you would be willing to engage in such an honest conversation with me shows a great deal of courage and poise, more than I showed you, I’m sure. I have much to learn from you, and it was wrong to shut down the conversation because I took offense and thought no further.
You have taught me a lot already, Noha, more than I realized this morning.
Thank You,
Kyle
Hi Kyle,
Many thanks for your reply. And thank you for the link – “To Educate the Human Potential.” I’ve given it a quick look and will need to find time to give a more in depth study but one quote really stands out for me : –
“If the idea of the universe be presented to the child in the right way, it will do more for him than just arouse his interest, for it will create in him admiration and wonder, a feeling loftier than any interest and more satisfying. ” In my experience this is one of the great things about the Universe Story in that it can do exactly that – create a deep sense of Awe and Wonder” in the child.
Very much looking forward to your webinar too!
Best Wishes,
Rod
Rod,
I’m glad you’re finding that work helpful – it’s one of my favorite works of Montessori. The quote you chose is one I’ve gone back to many times. The universe story is more than a way of generating interest, though it certainly does that. Rather, it generates the kind of deep contemplation and fascination that leads to profound epiphanies about nature and our place in it (a concept that Montessori calls our cosmic gift/cosmic task). Hence the reason that origins stories have been central to cultural identities for millennia.
Please let me know what you think after you finish reading the whole thing. I’ve got a lot more recommendations if you want to hear them!
Best,
Kyle
Dear Kyle & Jennifer,,,
I truly cried when reading your comments. I don’t know what to say! Thank you so much for being tolerant with me, with all my faults, confusions, & misunderstandings!
Kyle I’m extremely sorry to offend you, it was at all of no intention from me! I didn’t mean at all to direct the word murderer as a personal description, & believe me if I had the slightest hint it would offend you, I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all. I’m sorry, as I don’t talk to people a lot, that’s why when I get to talk I say my heart out, without any regards for personal communication norms, that people get angry with me, without me intending it at all! I’m so embarrassed of myself, I’m so sorry.
Any dialogue would hold many misunderstandings, bumps, & obstacles, but we have to always keep trying… But after all we all descend from one human being, from one living entity, from one universal origin, our differences were constructed by time, & they can also be removed by time & perseverance…
Yes, you’re right, we should look to each other all as human beings. I shouldn’t have judged you as an American, but as a human being. & you’re definitely right, no political system that currently exists in this world now, not even the so-called “democratic” systems truly are representative. All political systems have become corrupt with money & corporations-interests prevailing above all. Even the larger masses (not only the American, but all the peoples across the globe) have become corrupted with the education systems that incorporates them into a prevailing social & cultural setting that absolutely contradicts the human purpose. People accept this setting as “reality”. They accept (& actually are indoctrinated in schools from the days of their innocent childhood to think) that “reality” is the world being divided into “States”, each “State” has a “military” to fight other enemy evil “States” or protect themselves, & when they “vote” for the government (that actually preserves this delusional reality) they are being self-determined “citizens” because they choose who gets to “make things never diverge from this corrupt constructed reality”, that entertainment for children is to buy them play station games to play as if they’re killing other evil nationalities or play wrestling & football to “play-fight” each other on the field, the whole entertainment-culture around us is indoctrinating violence & divisions in children’s & adolescents’ minds…
And this brings me to what you mention Kyle, that those horrendous actions have been committed by only “some” American soldiers, & that this doesn’t represent the American “army”. But what made you think this is the action of “some” not “most or all” the American military? Is it because the American media portrays the American soldiers as the “heroes” who protect you & the “American nation”? Those selfless heroes who give up their lives & comfort for “honor & duty”? After all this media propaganda you can’t get yourself to imagine that “most” American soldiers do these barbaric acts, that the whole American military is based on the idea of “destruction & terrorism” – that it destroyed “whole” societies & even regions, & murdered over a million people, whom you’re so angry about one of them coming & murdering fifty people in your country? Why do you think that ISIS is terrorist & extremist & the American army is not? Is it because ISIS uses beheading while American soldiers use bombing with air strikes? Or is it because ISIS wear rag clothes & American soldiers wear fancy suits? Or is it because ISIS kills in the name of “Allah” & American soldiers kill in the name of “honor”? Tell me, what’s the difference between ISIS & the American army, the Egyptian army, or any other army in the world?!
Yes, this is not only the American army, this is about ALL army & security institutions, including the Egyptian army. The Egyptian army, & all other armies around the world, are terrorist institutions. Why?! Because their very mission is the murder (& mass genocide) of people in other places in the name of defense & protection of what?! Of me (in the case of the Egyptian army)?! Of my family?! They’re only protecting the regimes, the few numbers of people who have accumulated political & financial power that they keep this military-industrial complex going on to protect their power. And believe me, there’s no difference here between authoritarian regimes & so-called democratic ones. If authoritarian regimes do it by coercion & force, so-called democratic regimes preserve it by the indoctrination of the people (which also happens of course in authoritarian regimes), making them think & believe that this is the “natural state of affairs”, corrupting the minds of innocent “humanly natural” minds of children in education to grow up “knowing” this as “reality”, making façade election scenes to make the people fancy they can “choose” between different actions, when in fact they’re choosing between different rotten fruits within the same preserved “crooked basket” of a system!
Why should we then be surprised or blame or be shocked at the seemingly divergent violent actions of some dispersed individuals & groups, & hail “Terrorism” at them, because they talk different than us, or wear different than our fancy clothes; when actually their actions are not divergent at all; their actions are exactly within the same direction that our whole “State Systems” works on, & their “terrorism” is just a minuscule version of the organized legitimate “terrorism” (or in the media-speak “honorable defense of the nation” – & I don’t mean by this only the American media’s description of its army but also the Egyptian’s media description of its army, & all national media across the world) that state military institutions are built to commit?!
There’s a wonderful piece in George Orwell’s 1984 book (which is a book banned in many countries including here in Egypt) explaining this:
“The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the 19th century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society… From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, & therefore to a great extent for human inequality, has disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, & disease could be eliminated within a few generations… But it was also clear that an all-around increase in wealth threatened the destruction – indeed, in some sense was the destruction – of a hierarchical society… For if leisure & security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate & would learn to think for themselves; & when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, & they would sweep it away… The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare… The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, & hence, in the long run, too intelligent… And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, & therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival…”
I would add to Orwell, that creating external enemies & sense of war with them, more so, making sure the preservation of a divided human global society into different nationalities within “States”, religions, races… divided within borders, & “educating & indoctrinating” the masses into fake “national” identities, & mobilizing them to aim for protecting their “national honor, borders, values… etc.” against the “other barbaric terrorist extremist enemy” (ex. In Egyptian media: a world conspiracy to overthrow the Egyptian state like Syria. In American media: Islamists trying to sow fear in our free nation. In Russian media: Americans want to overpower Russia in the world. In European media: Islamists want to turn Europe into a Muslim state. In Chinese media: Americans want to disturb the increasingly growing power of China. In Arab media: the West wanting to keep the Muslim World underdeveloped & defeated), because not only the machine, but furthermore the “internet” has turned into a very dangerous instrument against this “international system”, it provided a huge potential to bind the global human society & raise an awareness of the futility of the constructed divisions between them, so to preserve the status-quo (power & money accumulated with the few), the minds of the people have to be directed to an illusory danger… & that’s why the whole media keeps on chanting against ISIS, while ISIS is nothing but a natural legitimate “even if legally unrecognized” baby off-spring of the corrupted violence-institutionalized international system we were indoctrinated to accept as our “reality”!…
Thanks a lot Lowell!
looking very much forward to the live chat on thrusday evening. the school is fantastic!
orla
Thanks so much Noha! This is a huge help for for reaching many more people!
Dear Noha, Thanks to Jennifer Morgan, we have been reading your letters to Kyle, and we would like to write you a short note now. If you wish, then, we could correspond again, maybe at more length. First, just about ourselves. One of us, Juliana, is a teacher who founded and for years administered a school for young children. The other, Dick, is a retired pastor in the Episcopal Church, who has taught sociology for years and studies the way social systems work, or don’t work.
The story you told about the boy whom you reluctantly let go, as he rushed back to the front, very possibly to die, moves us because it is so compassionate. You fully understood his wish to die. You know what that is like.
We are also moved by the depression you have experienced, from reading the story about the girl raped by the American military, who later committed suicide, and in response to the stories and photos coming out of Abu Gharaib.
We can only imagine her shame and despair. We can only imagine your depression. But we know it is serious. Deeply serious.
We are very moved by your compassion for the boy, and for the girl, even if it plunges you into deep depression. We wish there were something we could say that would help you to avoid such suffering, but you understand the local, regional, and global reality far too well. Despair and depression make sense, seem unavoidable, because they absolutely reflect the reality that you are describing and that we know is there..
What saddens us even more is that you would suffer less if you were less compassionate, but if you lose your compassion, then we do not see what hope there is, either for those you love and serve, or for the rest of us.
Your moment with that boy, before he ran back to the front, is so critical. You two were so close in heart, soul, and spirit. Your memory of his struggle and of yours, of your spiritual connection with him, of your parting, and your wondering about what happened when he did go back to the front, all these will last, will continue to matter, will long move you, and will move all others to whom you tell that story.
We hope you will keep telling this story.
If there is heart and soul anywhere in this struggle, there it is.
Let us know if you would like to talk further.
Juliana McIntyre Fenn and Dick Fenn
You’re welcome Jennifer 🙂 Even though perhaps some Arabs holding onto the traditional religious framework may feel uneasy with this new education paradigm, just introducing the idea, stimulating speculative discussions, & time taking its course, will eventually articulate a more knowledge-wise widespread human awareness throughout the region & the globe…
Dear Richard, Juliana, & Dick,,,
Thank you so much for this beautiful comment, which has truly moved me 🙂 I’m very happy to see that you have the same appreciation for human empathy & compassion as I do, which it seems arises from our common interest in psychology.
I sadly, cannot claim that I closely understood the boy’s wish to die or the raped girl’s situation, & this is the thing that hurts me the most, & causes my depression; the idea or image that another human being has gone through suffering which I cannot fully fathom because I’m not put in their situation. This drives me to force my mind to imagine being in their situation, to try to ease my pain from knowing that I can’t relieve their suffering. But the exhaustion of my brain, along with knowing that I can’t change anything, neither relieve their suffering, nor “be” with them to suffer along with them in a sense of “sharing” the suffering together; causes my depression. I especially feel this when I encounter the suffering of children & the sexual assault on women, because they embody the innocent & pure conscience within fragile physical bodies being tortured by unnatural aggressive force that their conscience – of a simple serene peaceful existence – cannot fathom.
What causes also my depression, anger, & an urgent need to radically change our present, is what I perceive to be a widespread numbness & apathy of many people around the world toward this daily suffering of their fellow humans (a numbness & apathy that I admit to hold in myself too, & that angers & depresses me even more). A common thing people tell me when I talk to them about this is: “Why don’t you just shut off the news channel & live your life?!”, or “This is “reality” since the beginning of history. We can’t change that. We have to accept it!”, or “Thank God this is not happening to us, & our lives are happy & peaceful!”.
So that’s what people do, “if” they accidentally get to see some of this suffering, “if” they open a media outlet that actually covers a part of this suffering… They “thank God” their lives are better than this, they turn off the channel, & go play some video games or party with their friends! Or even attend to their business work & daily life tasks without any second thoughts! Perhaps they’ll have one moody day, give out some donation to a charity organization, but that’s it, everybody goes on with their lives, because this is how “life goes on”!
Perhaps this would’ve been fathomable in older days, when many people didn’t get access to live communication & news of other people’s suffering in other places. Their only direct witnessing of human suffering was local, & they could then establish a communal solidarity network to support those who suffer. And when the TV & newspapers outlets outspread, they were majorly biased & selective in covering the news of people suffering in other places, to serve the interests of solidifying & preserving a so-called “national interest” in people’s cognitions vs. other “nations”.
But now, with the huge flow of free information & live videos/images over the internet, & the evolution of a means to develop a human conscience of an instantaneous coexistence with fellow suffering humans – with the boundaries of space, time, & power censorship annihilated -; still the boundaries of psychological selfishness (taking my family in, closing the door, & thanking God we’re not in their situation!), psychological disguise (shutting off the news communication & living my life as if nothing is going on!), & identity perceptual illusions (ex., a so-called “White Christian American” human unable to break illusory perceptions of religious, racial, & national differences, & geographical distance, to re-unite with a so-called “Colored Muslim Arab” human to experience a holistic empathy with their suffering); those boundaries, if not showing any signs of weakening, are actually showing signs of more intransigence against the unifying means of the internet!
Yes, I’d love to talk further with you 🙂
Yes absolutely Noha. I completely understand since we have the same concerns from people inside traditional religious frameworks here as well. One of our goals on the Network is to help people feel more comfortable with these views and to know that they don’t have to choose, they can hold both, and even enhance both. Hoping to offer some programs about this in 2017. Would love to hear any feedback you might have as we plan next year.
Thanks so much for this Jim. So many people have used these ideas. Great to see their origin!!!
Looks wonderful; I am recommending this to my students!
Thank you SO MUCH for notifying us with this wonderful MOOC Jennifer ♥ It is so amazing. I also made an event (in Arabic) on facebook for it (& linked DTJN to it) & invited all my contacts, so that we can take it together, & I hope its English will not be so difficult for people whose English is not fluent…
Oh, I forgot to post the event link: :*)
https://www.facebook.com/events/1386161444746187/
Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you, thank you. I sing with you the Universe Story and feel so privileged to have found friendship with you this year. What an amazing tapestry of threads! What a deep and personal account of your life’s passion! I am deeply moved. Thank you!
Thank you for sharing this personal and inspiring narrative of your personal evolution. I needed to read this today and the Universe guided me here.
Reading your story within the Big Story touches my heart and my brain. Write more, Dear Friend!
Thanks for conducting this interview and others in the series Maria! Thought provoking questions, laced with humor. Great combo!!
FANTASTIC JIM! PLEASE KEEP US APPRISED OF LOGISTICS AND I WILL SEND A SPECIAL NOTICE TO THE NETWORK!
Thanks for adding these. They’re such stimulating discussions; I’m sure most people think they know how evolution works, when what they know is the Modern Synthesis. (Of course, here in the US, you’re lucky even to get that.)
I just read about their poor backgrounds–the Noble brothers exemplify the value of scholarship funds. I would also like to hear them chat after a scotch or two…
Fantastic post Betsey about the formation of dirt it’s key role in cosmic evolution, crucial for the evolution of plants and animals on land!
Thank you, Jennifer! As always, love your enthusiasm.
Brilliant telling and insights —I guess you can say you are Giving Us the Dirt on Dirt!
Dirt can even nourish us in other ways:
In an article in Gardening Know How, Bonnie L. Grant explained that certain microbes commonly found in soil have an ability to raise serotonin . Artificially-manufactured serotonin is the stuff that does the job in Prozac and other popular antidepressants. People who “dig in the dirt” may absorb the microbes by inhaling them in dust or through cuts or scratches in their skin – or if they accidentally swallow some in the process of planting, weeding, or harvesting. The effects are noted to last for up to three weeks.
For musical companion teaching song, please check out Earth Pledge from the CD Grass Roots! by Earth Mama at http://www.earthmama.org
Thanks for beautiful photos with the story.
Thank you so much, Joyce. I’ve been reading about dirt’s importance in our gut, and how much we need to literally eat dirt. But the idea that we are inhaling precursors to serotonin while gardening is a new and very wonderful thought. No wonder it feels so good to play in the dirt! Love all these ideas. Loved the video on your home page. I, too, balk at mosquitos, but I come around, however mystified by earth’s need for them!
That’s great Jonathan! Thanks for posting!!!
Thank you so much for posting this Mike! I will post an article about cities and states within the US that are going forward with the Paris Accord despite Trump’s move to pull us out.
Fantastic Mike! Thanks. So look forward to reading this after the International Jesuit Congress, about to start. Several of us are in Cleveland, Ohio for the conference and giving programs.
This is an excellent and comprehensive study of Big History. I was wondering if there have been any insights from quantum physics. Has the development of Big History been influenced by concepts of a conscious universe? Perhaps such insights have been included in the works of astrophysicists or Teilhard .
Thanks for this.
Jim,
Thanks for posting this. It is a spectacular film. After Robert Redford watched the screening of this film at his Sundance Festival he said, “You’ve never seen anything like this before.” The rate of ice dissolution in the Arctic and Antarctic is shocking. The recent ice separation from Larsen C ice field in Antarctica has created a trillion ton ice berg the size of the State of Connecticut. These shrinking ice fields in Polar Regions are a clear example of how climate change warming trends will affect other parts of the globe, including our own.
Mike
Thank you Mike for posting this. I appreciate your play on words…made possible through an integral framework and understanding of being in a bound relationship…no divorce or squiggling out of it.
I also have not found the term “Stewardship” sufficient for compassionate action. Stewardship imply’s yet another identity to settle into…another ‘to do ‘ label.
An identity based on relationship implies a 24/7 moment by moment demand for discernment …..’how do I relate with……….” whatever is before us in the here and now. Indigenous mindfullness at its best.
Thank you.
Hi Toni!
I can hardly wait to read your dissertation. The table of contents alone is riveting and alluring!
We plan to get it printed…..unless you have copies ‘published’ that we could order.
Jennifer is so right…..all of our shared Great Work is ‘mutually enhancing’…..supportive…..informative….inspiring!
Mine/ours is here: http://www.samguarnaccia.com, and on the DTJN site in various forms.
Thank you for posting and sharing!
Sam
Toni, your dissertation is great news for Mother Earth and all life within it! I really rejoice! Like Sam, I haven’t read it yet, but am drooling to get time to read it. Skimming was tantalizing! So proud of you. Hope it’s published soon. Congratulations and hugs!
Toni – This is an amazing piece of work and I am sure representative of an amazing amount of time and energy! Thank you so much for doing this, and especially for sharing it on DTJN! It is truly inspiring in so many ways – I keep coming back to it. I hope many will take the time to delve into this, it is truly a beautiful read! THANK YOU! – Gwen
Hi Everyone,
I will be talking to Toni on Monday about the idea of hosting a Q&A about her dissertation. Let me know you’d be interested in participating.
Thanks!
Jennifer
Dear Sam, Terri, and Gwen,
Thank you for your enthusiastic reception. I have been worried that it would be too dry and academic for real people to read. Your comments give me hope.
A number of people have asked if the dissertation exists in another format, more friendly to copying. Actually no, not yet. If you are interested, I am thinking of re-formatting it into a magazine format – two columns, single spaced. Would that be better?
Hi Jennifer and all,
I would be interested in participating in the Q and A. Yes, Toni, a friendlier format would be appreciated.
Thank you, Jennifer!!
Cannot wait to read John’s new book…..an indescribably profound topic, and the keystone to our transition to a thriving future for the human and all-life!
These videos are astounding and highly recommended for all deep timers.
Hi Kyle, This resource is so valuable and enduring. It’s one of the most popular resources on the Network. Thanks so much for creating it. Jennifer
Thanks so much for posting this Michael. One of the major purposes of this Network is to show how different lineages have been looking at the universe as a foundational context, and converge in so many ways. Your paper shows the convergence between Montessori Cosmic Education and a Deeptime Perspective and Principles of Deeptime Education, which would be natural since Montessori Cosmic Education was one of four lineages that inspired me to write the Principles of Deeptime Education. 🙂 There’s more information about the four lineages on the Foundation Resources page. To get there, click on the link in the top right on this page.
Happy to show how our ideas converge!
This was an excellent summary of cosmic education and the great meaning it has for elementary children. I wold love to share this essay with the elementary teachers in training. I teach all the cultural subjects in a training program. I love your book Cosmic Education in the Montessori Elementary classroom and use it for philosophy discussions on cosmic education.
Thank you Michael and D’Neil.
Linda Aaquist
Thanks for the kind words. You’re welcome to share the essay with your adult learners, with appropriate credit.
Hi Michael,
Many thanks for posting your article! I found it really interesting. Not being very familiar with Montessori Cosmic Education, I love the way you have very clearly outlined the five guiding principles. The first one that you outline of ‘Orienting to a vast evolving universe’ seems so crucial and important to me. This very much is in alignment with our own approach to education at Global Generation. I was also struck by the Aline Wolfe quote and her expressing that Cosmic Education can really give children and Young People a sense of meaning and Purpose in life – something that, I feel is needed perhaps more than ever.
Thank you Michael for so concisely and informatively explaining the overlap between DeepTime perceptive and Montessori Education,
Rod Sugden
Hope this helped give you a small intro into Montessori education. It really does begin with the universe as context.
Nice comparison, Michael! Simple to understand and a beautiful summary of Montessori Cosmic Education as it relates to Deeptime Education and Perspective. I hope you and D’Neil will drop by and join the Deeptime Network: Teachers group on Facebook. It would be great to have you join the discussions there!
Good to hear from you, Claudia. Maybe we can find some time to join the teachers group, although I’m not very into Facebook.
It’s low-key! I hope you’ll join us! You were just featured in a post last week! Check it out!
Truly wondrous Sam that you’re taking the Emergent Universe Oratorio to another level by integrating the music of other cultures. Please post more news throughout your creative process. It’s evolution in action — different cultures sharing their interiority and creating something new . . . the universe itself finding more ways to express itself and tell it’s story. With deep gratitude and admiration! Jennifer
Thank you so much, Jennifer, for this inspiring comment!
We’re in the midst of organizing many levels of follow up with people and places in India, and tying it back to ongoing work here. Briefly…..two Jesuit organizations and other references; the Symphony Orchestra of India; Symbiosis University and related connections; several promising relationships made at the Fireflies Dialogues near Bangalore, from many places in India and Brazil.
The new DTN site is spectacular….and thank you again, for the tutorial!
In the next few days we will begin to post many more details about these and other emerging Deep Time related initiatives.
Traci and the whole team at R&V Charter School — What a huge gift and guide this is to education. Being able to see a deeptime approach inside the classroom, and how it integrates all learning, is truly inspiring. I hope that every teacher on the Network and beyond watches it.
Thank you so much for posting this piece Sam! Your interview, and Paula’s, along with Cami’s painting is truly extraordinary!
You are so welcome, Jennifer. All the DTN work, design, function, unique convergence of intellect, imagination, devotion, perseverance, creativity, and educational courage are so inspiring and critical to the emergence of a ‘mutually enhancing human Earth relationship.’ (Thomas Berry)
This article by Duane Elgin is excellent and very much needed in a climate changing world. We need a new context for understanding what is happening to Earth and what we can do about it. This article helps give us that context.
What a fantastic article! It was fascinating to learn more about your wondrous Emergent Universe Oratorio. Your comments are brilliant, Sam and Paula! And Cami’s art work is glorious too!
Thanks so much posting this Norah! It’s a lens for seeing the world.
If you want to read the best overview of Montessori Cosmic Education, read this one.
Thanks so much for posting this article Brian. Here’s another recent article in the New York Times on the same topic.
Such an important message. Thank you Mike!!
The shamanic voice seems to be appearing more and more as we enter deeper into this climate crisis. I feel as though I am listing for the way forward. Thank you for this posting this piece, Mike.
Thank you for your everlasting creative work to further Thomas Berry’s incredible gift he is to the whole Community of Life, so critical now for our times.
We think of you and John often.
Grateful,
Jean and Larry Edwards
Thanks for your comment Jean and Larry. So so true!
Dear Mary Evelyn, we can’t thank you enough for your interview on the eve of Thomas Berry’s tenth anniversary and release date of the new biography, so insightful about his life and huge significance for today. With deep gratitude, Jennifer
Jennifer, Thanks very much for organizing this great discussion with Mary Evelyn. It was wonderful to hear from her and see the broad range of participants from various parts of world. You are doing e doing great work.l.
Thanks Mike! The work of Thomas Berry is so deep that it would take several lifetimes to plumb the depths, and having Mary Evelyn help us to focus in on her work was helpful beyond words. So great to have you participate. The experience really opened my eyes to what’s possible with the webinar format so we’ll do much more. What kinds of webinars would you like to see Mike?
Fantastic interview with Mary Evelyn!!
Both of you gave us excellent, from-the-heart presentations. And, today’s follow up email is so good to have, to listen to and watch again.
Mary Evelyn Tucker provided clarity concerning Berry’s perspective on the contributions of Maria Montessori. In terms of our approach to Montessori integrative learning, I would say that Berry’s Great Work and Montessori’s cosmic task are so closely related that one can hardly make a distinction. Phil Gang, The Institute for Educational Studies (TIES), http://www.ties-edu.org
Great job Mike! Would love to read more about the shamanic practices that people of all ages (and especially the young) can learn to help develop a deeper and more intimate bond with the Natural world.
Bravo on this Mary Evelyn Tucker interview. More soon!
Joyce Rouse (AKA Earth Mama)
http://www.earthmama.org
Dear Jennifer,
It was so wonderful tuning in to listen to you and Mary Evelyn. Your questions were so good, and your fielding of the questions coming in and sending them to home plate (forgive the baseball image) (where did that come from?)—it was a great Q and A and I felt totally inspired once again, and energized! Thanks so much for doing that…a great idea / inspiration / celebration of Thomas.
Let’s allow ourselves to be filled with amazement that among all the people in the world, we are blessed to have “been there” to meet and be befriended by Thomas! And taught by him! And now like the stories in the Acts of the Apostles….we have good news to spread to buoy up the hope for our world! We are the ones! And you are doing it! ! ! ! I loved learning about some of the new resources!
Lots of Congratulations for this broadcast well done this evening, and gratitude for that and for you!
Love,
Mary Southard
Dear Mary Evelyn and Jennifer,
Your conversation…..really a revelatory excursion into the numinous territory of one of the greatest minds, hearts, and spirits in the history of humanity……whose gift with words, deeply fermented in the crucible of patient, intellectual and emotional engagement with ALL domains of knowledge, being, and feeling…..of a ‘communion of subjects’……and a dedication to the Great Context/Story/Understanding/Being. The joy of connecting internationally….globally……easily……spontaneously…..is one of the gifts of the Deep Time Network and the love of learning that Jennifer brings to everything she does. Mary Evelyn, with John, is a mentor’s mentor, an irresistible force of right thinking, relationship, and care. What a mix of gentle and persuasive power, kind and passionate reasoning, love and willingness to work ‘things’ through ’till the end. Thank you!
Wow! Thank you Sam . . . you always have a way of saying things so smoothly and passionately. So grateful for your comment!
What a fascinating interview! Mary Evelyn Tucker eloquently articulates who Thomas Berry was and why he was—and continues to be—so important. Jennifer Morgan and others on the podcast ask insightful questions.
Embracing global historical and cultural perspectives led Thomas Berry to create a new and creative vision about our relationship with the cosmos. Thomas brought the spirituality of cosmology into dialogue with science, which led to the fields of contemporary spirituality and evolutionary spirituality. Some thought–provoking highlights of the Q&A interview for me include that:
• We are birthed from cosmic processes.
• The microcosm of the human is related to the macrocosm of the universe.
• The universe is the primary liturgy.
• We are bio-cultural beings.
• We’re between two stories.
• What is the Great Work for this time?
• Does Thomas’ work contribute to the evolution of a new consciousness?
By addressing the four lineages—New Story, Maria Montessori, Big History, and Gaia Systems—this interview covers and connects a wide range of ideas.
I highly recommend this intriguing and informative resource.
Thanks Imogene for summarizing the highlights of this webinar. The experience opened up the possibility for offering many more webinars on the Network. More than ever, it’s so crucial to connect across the globe inside a deeptime perspective of our past and future, and intimate interconnection. With thanks!!!
My brain is full of new possibilities for sharing the work of Thomas Berry after watching this video the first time. I know I will revisit it when needed to tease out the threads of so many rich ideas touched upon here!
When I speak of Berry, I generally mean it as a shortened version of saying “Berry,Teilhard de Chardin, Indigenous, Confucianism and all the wisdom sources included in the brilliant synthesis of the Universe Story work that Berry, Tucker, Swimme and so many others have added to and unpacked for the rest of us”.
Great interview and wonderful questions from the world wide audience. Highly recommended!
Joyce Rouse
http://www.EarthMama.org
Thanks a million Nagesh for what you’re doing with the Cosmic Walk. I look forward to learning more about how you’re doing it in India. Will you speak with us in a webinar for members?
For sure. I would love to share my experiences of doing cosmic walks at Tarumitra
This is awesome Jon. Thanks so much for sharing news about it, and making it available to others!
Thanks for posting, Jon. LOVE it! Great cosmic inspiration as I work away doing summer prep. 🙂
Great to see you here Shelley! Do let us know how you use it, if you do.
Thanks, Jennifer. Will do and will try to get back into the posting groove!
Are social justice issues unrelated to the Cosmic Story? Yes, according to Carl Anthony. Listen to the podcast to hear about his personal awakening.
Thanks Lowell! Look forward to reading this latest issue.
Here’s a new post by Ann Sutton about how they are just did the Cosmic Walk, inspired by YOU Nagesh, in Prague.
Here are comments we received by email:
I totally enjoyed Michael’s presentation and gained lots of Cosmic Education information.
— Linda Aaquist
I’m an Early Childhood Montessori Teacher and I do feel that we can address Cosmic Education on this level, however, as a mother with a child in her last year in Children’s House, I’m very excited after listening to this recording for what she has to look forward to in hearing these stories of the universe when she enters her Elementary class next year…and, as our school has a Middle School, continuing – hopefully with a teacher like Kyle! – after that.
— Nanci Guartofierro
Surely the Universe is rejoicing with such rich and beautiful and interesting and helpful material! As an elder, I realize how affirming this is, and how much suffering happens when elders have missed the early stages, and despair when they cannot be active! (I was so fortunate to have had poor health and learned rather by force that my task was not getting “work” done, but contributing to the consciousness and compassion of the universe, which I could do in bed. Thank you, thank you for all the time and effort and love you have put into these marvelous programs!
— Terri Mackensie
FYI, in the 80’s Catholics and Catholic educators were becoming aware that charity wasn’t enough; justice was needed. Some of us did “infusion workshops” to help teachers integrate justice-awareness and action into everything else — exactly what your speakers indicated should be done with cosmic education. I’m out of the Catholic education scene, but certainly hope we are “infusing” these cosmic concepts and goals!
— Terri Mackensie
Thanks so much and thank you for presenting this course! Jay
I LOVED IT. I had developed years ago Yogagaia.com… The yoga that reconnects us to the Kosmos.
— Hasita Nadai
Thank you so much for the lecture and discussion last night. It was invigorating.
I have, and regularly share with my LE class, Jennifer’s books. Every single time, their story and the accompanying artwork is met with awe and wonder.
—Andrea Clark
Hi, Jennifer. It did not register with me that you were the author of three of my favorite books! We read each one of them in class as we go through the stories of the universe, and life, and enjoy them so much. They are beautiful books, and I keep them in my personal library. Thank you for contributing in such a lovely way to the education of young people!
— Cyndy Terrien
More comments by email:
I enjoyed Cosmic Themes and Human Development, especially the ideas around people in their elder years. I think that taking Montessori into facilities where seniors need care is a fantastic idea. I will contemplate that some more!
— Cyndy Terrien
I thoroughly enjoyed last night’s Cosmic Themes!
— Jane Lemon
THANK YOU!
Your program(s) are sure to fill a huge, gaping hole I have had not being able to continue in Montessori-teacher-training past that of ages 3-6. Here in my last planes of life I study, in a rather disjointed way, holistic educations, social justice, history, Sociocracy, Partnerships, and math. I will be sure to share your online presence with others. (Heart) ❤️
— Sheryl Morris
Thanks so much for this Norah. Could not be more important for today.
Everyone, be sure to take a look at the post by Nagesh that inspired this post. The link to Nagesh’s post is above.
Welcome, Mohit!! We have heard much about you, and see daily the amazing work you do. Thank you—for your role on DTN is the ‘strong nuclear force’—the embodiment of our collective being.
Thank you so much Sam. You made my day 🙂
@sguarnaccia and @paulaguarnaccia. This may be of interest to you. Norah compares Covid-19 with the Black Death in 1666 in Thomas Berry’s writings and how it disrupted human thinking at the time. How is Covid-19 disrupting our thinking now. I particularly like Norah’s paragraph about how earth/universe sent so many disasters to wake us up.
So sorry I had to miss this. My internet was at a crawl all day and I could not connect. I was really looking forward to it. Is it recorded anywhere?
Hi Joyce! It’s on YouTube. Here’s a link: https://youtu.be/wI9_hC6ygIA
It’s on our Deeptime Network YouTube channel. We’re learning a lot about sound quality for music in Zoom. There are some check boxes that optimize sound quality. 🙂 Jennifer
Only getting started here. I see your Iris photo front and center! I have a crazy one unfolding in our side yard!
Hi Mike… read your article on Converting the Churches…. very good. My own journey has been and still is that. I’ve been active since 1991 and have had some success which from some perspectives is impressive but in terms of the overall mission is minuscule. I realize I have been a bit reticent about sharing my experience inside the institution and its partly due to ignorance about the culture of blogs etc. However in my search I found your blog and it is pushing me to do it. Thank you.
I see we have shared the same path. I myself took leave for a few years and eventually decided to return. It was not a clear decision on my part. I was unhappy inside and unhappy when I left, slightly less unhappy when I returned but the process brought me in touch with Brian and the New Story all that unhappiness was resolved, not totally of course but with hope again.
Hi John,
Thanks for your response. You and I have been on a very similar journeys. Looking back it was a difficult journey at times. But I’m glad I made the decisions I made. My wife and I just celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. We have three adult children and two grandchildren. They are all a treasure. I’m deeply grateful for my dozen years as a Passionist monk and priest. The greatest and most formative gift I received was to know and learn from Thomas Berry. He was my mentor–the dominant influence in my life and I will always be grateful.
Best Wishes
Mike
Macfarlane’s book is beautifully written and truly thought-shifting. The title, however, is Underland: a Deep Time Journey, I bet Underwood was a spellcheckism! By the way his book “Lost Words” is magical.Here is a sample.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYKgtDXJ4mM
Nice resource
Thanks for the column. I share your angst re: traditionsal views of church, and the focus on individual salvation from narrow sin-redemption model that sounds more like an evacuation plan from the earth upon expiring here. Larger domes of meaning are in order. The largest group of the faithful now are the “Nones,” or the SBNR (spiritual but not religious) group. Institutional religion is becoming defunct, and thinking persons realize we’re headed for an evolution along holistic, eco-spiritual lines, a church without walls that your timely comments suggest. Its part of what is evolving. Passing from old order, to reorder usually involves a period disorder, where I think we are now, and will be for awhile. Is no direct flight from order to reorder, without a period of unknowing. In the interim, hang on, inhabit your center and share your angst and inspirations with others who are going through similar periods of change and uncertainty.
Thank you Joe for your wise reflection. It has been my hope and belief that the emergent attractor from the chaos we are in and about to enter even more deeply will be the New Cosmology, the larger story that connects us with the whole. If humans, the story species, survive then our emergent attractor will be story, and the most function and inclusive story is the New Cosmological story unfolding now. Like Earth sprouts, there are groups popping up around the planet who are becoming familiar and energized by the New Story. However, it is in our DNA to share story and the church who has long provided that space is failing. Thomas Berry used to say that creating culture (shared story) is just as necessary as eating or drinking for humans. My vision is that some type of community gathering space like an Earth church begins to meet that need more fully and take hold, so it can be part of that emergent attractor. 😃. Since we are the Earth, I am hopeful we will do what ultimately is healthy for the Earth. May it be so.
Wonderfully vivid depiction of the interconnectivity of all things, in communal allurement at all scales. Seems the next key question to be answered is, “What is the nature and substance of those energy fields that draw all things to that center of centers in itself, themselves and each other? See my comment posted below your fine video. Hope do discuss with you sometime. Thanks again for this offering.
I have thought about this for many years.
I’ve come to this conclusion by Christ’s example.
For instance the story of the cripple lowered down through the roof.
In all 3 accounts of the story, only one line is the same.
“The son of man has power to forgive sin on earth.”
Christ shows the importance of our spiritual health, and how it far exceeds the need, of the physical.
Jesus encourages the confessions of our shortcomings one to another, to find forgiveness and receive healing.
In our societies there are imbalances, due in large part to addictions, born of generational curses and societies intolerance and it’s tolerance, or feelings that these problems are too ingrained, too shameful, to come into the light, so to speak; coupled with the nurturing of destructive tendencies through mainstream media that makes light of their destructive nature, by use of memes, comedy, sitcoms and even song, that many accept as entertainment now, because these shortcoming are so apparent in humanity.
I believe an earth church possible and even alluring; if it seeks to educate (council), as well as relate on a personal level, to finally be healed and forgiven. While at the same time nurturing and exposing our need for communal living (group therapies), for a multitude of beneficial reasons, too vast to uncover by oneself. While opening the enormity of the door that sings ” come as you are.”
Within the church, there needs to be a place where wise council is always available (to the point that no individuals circumstance is not addressed by being brought into a community that deals with everything, specialty communities within the community). As well as a body that is willing to embrace and go the distance (which gives birth to the accountability without having to make it burdensome) with unconditional acceptance. So formal invitations, without expectation, emphasizing meaning, that all are free to come in, and to exit freely, could be one way of breaching what has already begun evolving within the chaos of existence.
I have had so many inspirations over the years.
An earth church needs to be viewed as a spiritual hospital,
(Even those who would balk at the notion of spirituality can accept the institutions of love, joy, faithfulness, forgiveness, patience, kindness, gentleness, humility and temperance.) a place of education and individual and communal growth. A place where science, psychology, community, all forms of creation by artisans, are viewed as types of worship, and welcomed. Also it must offer alternatives to imprisonment for failure, for everyone to grow through the nurturing a purpose to a higher calling, of we as a whole. It must make allowance for the sacred and the profane. Without awareness of all the ways in which we do not build each other up, we cannot end the cyclical existence that tears us down, individually and as a whole.
With the rise now of cryptocurrencies, there also exists the possibility through the use of technology, to evolve our monetary system, from one that measures worth by that which is gained to a system that assigns merit by that which we give away. Rewarding merit on acts of love, and all the fruit of the holy spirit as we serve one another. This is a platform that can be realized. Such a system nurtures the natural and spiritual growth. Even our members in society who are now looked upon as burdens, become blessings, giving purpose to those who would give of themselves to the continuation of care and life by their very existence. Which in time will restore the ability to empathize, care and nurture.
I had read a study of grade school children from 30 years ago. The study measured the decline of the characteristics of empathy, caring and nurturing in our youth here in the U.S.
In 2016 I could find no successful methods instituted to instill our youth with these characteristics of caring and nurturing. Several attempts were tried, but unfruitful.
Should we ever attempt this, our first and foremost mission statement, I believe, should be exacted to the purpose of ending poverty, starvation, human trafficking and all forms of slavery (too many to mention here), by means of educational intitutions making this primary within that which we seek to heal thus raising the awareness of all citizens of the world and hopefully the urgency. While I know ecologically speaking many have justifiable concerns that there may not be enough time to heal the earth. There is enough awareness, and time, for the heart of God to heal by our evolving into this more spiritual way of existing.
I believe this church has already been started in many places, and in many ways, all over the world. Opening the virtual doors and welcoming in the whole of creation to this congregation, that is, already, and allowing it to grow as the road will always open up before us, has begun. Should we dare to embrace it.
Knowing this, that there will be a period of great hardship and suffering.
SELF, will not die quietly, and all that was prophesied by Christ
will come to pass it is inevitable.
I have tried to think of ways self could slowly fade into this unity.
All the sacred and all the profane together to realize an ecozoic and perhaps even a unizoic era realized in the generations to come. I believe it will happen, and likewise, I don’t think Jesus would take any offense to the teachings of all beings called to this higher purpose of unity. It stands to reason that God has by necessity, been many things, to many forms of life, over the canvas of creation and time.
Much love.
Thank you Jeffrey
As a longtime follower of the author/artist’s work, I am waiting my the mailbox for my copy to arrive! Her profound depth in written word and paintings are a dive into all things of Cosmic revelation. Healing is the operative word now!
Amazing paper! Thank you!
What’s most important is not to just fill out the child’s mind with info, but to give them the sense of purpose in the universe evolution story…
However, it would be difficult to give children living the consequences of severe social injustice in this world, a sense of “belonging” to this place/world. Especially that there’s severe disparity between the living conditions of people in various classes & countries (of the North & South, for ex.)… so perhaps, a vision for transformation for justice & freedom, & radical socio-political change from the kind of human-made world we’re stuck up in today, could be the only way to make such a child sense that they have a purpose to be resilient & struggle against these conditions…
Shirley, absolutely! Could I help you found this church? I’m there. In fact, I believe there are more folk and communities there than we know. I belong to Ruah in Toronto. Jubilee in Ashville NC is a fabulous Earth Church. Creation Spirituality Communities are scattered here and there. Perhaps you’ll drop in to one of my Evolutionary Ritual webinars at http://www.carolkilby.com
I’ve heard Jennifer speak of you, so I’m introducing myself to you in hopes of finding yet another co-creator. I’d be thrilled if you came to the book launch of Evolutionary Dancer on Earth Day at 7:30. The last part of the book is, in essence, an experiment in Evolutionary Spirituality or you might say, Earth Church. It traces how a small village congregation and I move through the Christian calendar using Berry’s new sacred story of the Universe, the four paths of Creation Spirituality, and the issues of climate crisis. It was such a privilege for me to be led to this circle of open-minded, open – hearted evolutionary elders. They gave me hope. Thank you for sharing here what I hope one day to see and be part of. http://www.carolkilby.com/events
Such a beautiful article!!
Thank you so much for this amazing resource
This is fantastic Brian. Thank you so much for posting, and Bernice THANK YOU for writing this important piece.
Thank you Jennifer. It’s a blessing to participate in the deep time community.
Thank you Brian for posting “She Who Is, Is Not,” and for sharing your allurement and delight in Her Presence.
Bernice, this is amazing. It says yes to all that I believe and more! It expands my love and understanding of the Divine. Thank you for being you and sharing this.
This reflection is like sinking into a bed of flower petals…luxurious language and imagery of the Divine Feminine. Powerful and deeply soothing at same time. So much gratitude to Bernice for such a prophetic work.
Beautiful poem. Lots to meditate on. Thank you!
This is so fascinating, and interesting love it. Looking forward to finishing this program and learn more.
Fantastic Norah! A lot of people will be interested your article. Be sure to post in the course as well!
Thanks, Jennifer – and I am going to change the image in a moment
It would be great to explore more deeply these two topics from the end of this article: “10. A new language, an Ecozoic language is needed. Our Cenozoic language is radically inadequate. A new dictionary should be compiled with new definitions of existing words and introduction of new words for the new modes of being and of functioning that are emerging. And 11. Psychologically, all the archetypes of the collective unconscious attain a new validity, also new patterns of functioning; especially in our understanding of the symbols of the heroic journey, the death-rebirth symbol, the Great Mother, the tree of life.” Thank you.
Thanks Judi, This is a valuable connection to have articulated, with supporting quotes, for me as a Montessorian observing and supporting the spiritual life of children.
Thank you Catherine, I am so thankful for the important and loving work with our children. It is always a joy to see you in our sessions and to hear your thoughtful comments.
This sounds great Imogene!
I appreciate this review of the history of Big History, and especially the questions he raises about what’s missing.
Thanks Di for asking this question. I read the critique of Big History a couple days ago as it was posted on a Yale feed; I found it a bit off-putting at that time, though I didn’t have a clear sense as to why. Your question causes me to re-exam the critique.
By full disclosure, Big History was my starting point into the DeepTime Network. David Christian’s earlier works (and those by others) along with The Universe Story starting me on this path.
My first observation is that the greatest volume of Professor Hesketh’s critique is to show Big History is not unique, but (as he explicitly states) is part of a long line of works using “stages” of development. He brings to this a useful perspective as his own work and publications focus on history, science and religion, with emphasis on 19th century England. In this, he adds a useful insight to seeing Christian’s work in a literary/ historical context.
He appears to diverge from Big History with his observation “But, much like the Judeo-Christian conception of history from which it derives, Big History reduces the vicissitudes of human history to processes that are ultimately beyond human control. What this means is that Big History necessarily privileges the cosmic at the expense of the human, the natural at the expense of the political.” I read in this two objections which converge to the same point: a failure to adequately give credit to human agency. This puzzles me and appears a bit over-stated, as humans don’t enter the narrative until the sixth of Christian’s eight stages. So immediately, he’s tossed consideration of the first five stages to focus attention on how the human agency is (or isn’t) properly described in the last three stages. I would have to go back and re-read Big History (it’s been many years) to assess if this criticism of the way the human story is narrated appears fair or not. Political history appears to be one of Professor Hesketh’s focus areas, so he may be correct, or he may have his own bias overly weighting this influence on development.
And I’m left confused by his observation “much like the Judeo-Christian conception of history from which it derives.” Is he saying that Big History is too theistic? Or that any work that suggests “progression” reflects a Judeo-Christian conception of history? I’m not a philosopher, but it seems overly constrictive to me to term a sense of historic “progression” uniquely to Judeo-Christian conceptions. (Though if he understands the alternative, non-Judeo-Christian concept of time is repeating cycles (like seasons), then maybe that’s his point.)
All in all, I view this critique as a mild set of complaints. It strikes me as someone seeing an opportunity to publish an article (my apologies, Professor Hesketh) more than providing a substantive critique. That Big History has antecedents and fits into a “genre” of writings is a useful perspective. But his article fails to make this scholarly observation a broader and more fundamental criticism of Big History.
Thanks, Gerald. I am about to undergo three to four weeks of radiation therapy following breast cancer surgery. I’m unsure of my ‘energy’ levels. But want to express first my appreciation for your comment. Hopefully we can continue to converse without losing the thread. I’m part of Module 2 for the Leadership Program. I may meet you there, or not. Thanks again.
Hi Mohit,
Glad to have you with us. You do great work. Thanks. I’m so incompetent with technology that you will be spending a great deal of time straightening me out. Sorry about that. .I’m grateful.
Mike
Welcome, Mohit!! Your work is invaluable in helping share a deeptime perspective and the transformative work of the Deeptime Network! Thank you for your superb work!!
This event sounds terrific!! I love the questions you’re raising and the “moons” that you’re pointing us too.
Will the event be recorded or available on another date? I will be out of the country on April 2 and would love to view it once I return.
Thank you for bringing this offering of Deeptime response into the world. We really need it!
As an educator I do not underestimate the shift in perspective here to the universe as revelatory and the application of this to education. It is an inspiration and a transformation and Montessori Education leads the way. I value the shift in thinking and support for this in the Deep Time Network. The universe is calling us to wake up in so many ways today.
Mr. & Mrs. Airshow, thank you so much for your video. I am new to the state of our planet. I’ve only become aware in the past few years, and your innovations around your home give me much hope, as Shawna and I have been thinking of things to implement in our home life to accomplish the same goals you’ve made a reality. May we all be more like ya’ll much love.
Jeff Laporte
Hi Jeffrey, Thanks for your comment. I’m glad the video gave you some ideas to adopt in your house. Don’t hesitate to contact me at [email protected] with any questions. I’ll be happy to talk with you. With much gratitude, Geoff
Hi Sarbmeet, many thanks for your interesting article. In particular I enjoyed reading about how time may actually come to an end at the centre of a black hole. The LISA project is also an interesting development. Dan
Keeping this treasure of meditations alive and accessible to us is such a gift.
Thank you Judith for your creativity and generosity of spirit.
Stephan, thank you for your vision in identifying the distinctive stages represented by the first set of images from the JWST. The cycle of life really is part of the story of the universe. It has been great to see the images so soon after completing the 9 month Deeptime Network course. Hopefully the next few months will allow all of humanity to see more awe-inspiring images of our ever expanding and evolving common home. Dan Troy
I wholeheartedly recommend this Leadership Program. It is a powerful incubator of ideas and action. I was profoundly transformed through its rich offerings and experiential learning, and know that human beings can effect change.
Thank you to this Deeptime Community for co-creating a flourishing future.
Lisa Verni
Quantum Relationality is a source of hope for co-creating the future we want.
Strange – lots of single letters missing from the text: efine for refine, cosolgies for cosmologies, etc.
I am interested in learning more about how different religious traditions are responding to this amazing new development. Thank God for Evolution is my first real connection. Looking for more. Reviews in Amazon on this book are not too encouraging.
Sarbmeet,
Thank you for this post; I’ve participated in several DTN courses and have heard you present, yet I found this description particularly easy to follow. This post, while a bit lengthy to call “concise,” presents the case for Quantum Relationality in clear, unambiguous terms. You’ve managed to connect numerous individual relationships into a single, coherent emerging whole. Learning to look at our world as a pattern of future possibilities is a useful and realistic perspective to develop. Thank you for taking the time to share this!
I loved the simplicity and the way this very deep reality of exodus and its meaning in our lives was expressed. I have shared it with a group of women who call themselves Elderberries since we are elders and try to live out the teachings of Thomas Berry. Nice to meet a fellow traveller.
This is so beautiful, Sarbmeet. I love the metaphors and the poetry. So much to think about, internalize, and appreciate. Thank you.
I was spellbound as I read your words. The beautiful poetry of the words and the hope and possibility within the ideas give me a sense of a meaningful future for humanity.
Beautiful piece, Sarbmeet. It really resonated with me. I think you nailed it. I believe that is how it works. The difficult part is the interiority of individuals. They can be allured by people and things outside themselves, but this is also where psychology comes in. It’s not easy for people to quiet down enough to hear and feel those allurements. That is where the real challenge comes, not only for us as individuals, but as a species also. But your explanation for how it works is spot on for me, but its we messy humans that have to get in line with this cosmic flow. I think Pogo said, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”
What an informative and provocative article. I am so glad I read it. It is really timely with my own cosmology and poetry blog piece, and especiallly following on the course on Quantum Wisdom in the DTN that concludes this week. Thank you for posting.
Reading through these narratives, I am blown up, with the rise in creativity all over the world. Its horizon widening and perspectives broadening. I am glad to have begun this journey of Cosmic Leadership.
So excited to be gathering with these folks! It will be evolutionary!
SO SO transformative. This work is evolutionary.
Thank you, Haseena. This is a beautiful treatise on a subject so dear to my heart.
I come from a slightly different approach to this than a young person might. I am almost
78 now, and I look back upon my life to ask these questions. Perhaps that is typical of
people my age. What was this life all about? Did I really contribute something of value?
If I compare myself to others, who have been more “out there”, eg, Mother Theresa, I
have failed miserably. But, if I am a part of the expression of the universe, then
certainly all the happenings in my life have meant something. I just don’t know what, but
maybe that is okay. We are beings that reflect upon what has been made through human
efforts and through our own life by comparison. For me, the unfolding of my life has been and continues to be a very great unknown with respect to a positive contribution to the universe. But, right now I am okay with that. Right now, I can just love and appreciate all of which I know and don’t know, all of my environment. The universe can decide what to do with that!
Georgianne, thank you for your heartfelt comment. One of the things I treasure and teach in my work is getting to the state where vulnerability is a strength and a gift. I deeply feel and appreciate your vulnerability in your comment. I think so many people are asking themselves these questions unconsciously or in an indirect way – “What was this life all about? Did I really contribute something of value?” As I read your words, I wanted to shout a resounding YES! You’ve liberated readers to ask themselves the same questions consciously and unfearingly. You’ve contributed to my evolution because I’ve been exposed to your viewpoint, which led to UN-explored thoughts within me. Our interaction has contributed to the collective evolution of the noosphere of Mother Earth and the expression of our Universe. Having said that, I love your inner peace of BE-ing in the place of okayness, and your BE-ing in Love and appreciation. Perhaps that’s what the UN-folding is about – it’s the journey, not any specific outcome. I honour the Light within you and your journey. Thank you for sharing. <3
Thank you Sarbmeet. Your description of the process of finding our home in the cosmic story makes my heart leap with joy as I see in it the path to spiritual discernment. For me one of the most spellbinding insights was seeing that it is in the interactions between our fascinations and the allurements of everything and everyone around us, that the essence of our being is evoked… This piece heals such wisdom for me I am sure to read it again and again. Thank you friend.
I truly resonate with what you have said. It is our allurements that propel us forward, guiding us to our life purpose and place in the cosmos. If we simply surrender and follow where our heart wishes for us to glide, then life becomes richer, fuller as we expand into our infinite nature, our cosmic nature.
And yes, we are Love. The human expression of the Divine vibration of Love.
Beautiful
Beautiful! I too have experienced such powers in that liminal space .. thank you for this ….
wonderful ! What a gift to a family. And what a gate to session 5!
Thank you John and Carol!
What a beautiful ritual at a time when we’re collectively striving to make sense of a new world we’re still learning to live in. Expressing feelings in safe community has such a great energy of shared warmth and support. Our world so needs that right now. Thank you, Jennifer, for sharing – I am going to take a leaf out of your book for a retreat that my sister and I are planning for next year.
At the top of this message are the words “Created by Ebenezer Boateng.” Boateng’s wife is named “Mary.” Please change the message to “Created by Ebenezer Boateng and Mary and the unfolding Universe.”
She’s adorable Ebenezer! It’s love at first sight!
HIGHLY recommend this course taught by my dear Deeptime Colleague, Haseena Patel.
Dear Jean,
I just read your beautiful piece about your and Larry’s life and commitment to Deeptime living. What loving memories I have of both of you over these many years. I am sorry for your loss of Larry, but I know he is still very much with you. Know I send you much love,
gratitude and promise of prayers. Sister Gervaise
Beautiful. Thank you. Larry’s life story has inspired me to keep going on this Deeptime Earth path…
The indigenous art in Australia, with its very ancient tradition, has many examples which provide insight into the meaning of Deep Time, from the beginning of the Dreaming (Dream Time) to specific existing land forms and plants as well as animals. This body of work, including including ancient cave and rock paintings, is particularly helpful to all people trying to make meaning in this island continent landscape.
Zoom Link for Berry Forum Contemplative Ecologists Circle Presentation by Angela Manno: https://iona.zoom.us/j/98750807089?pwd=VHJuRmliWXdNNEozamdydllxL2RBQT09 Password: 961124
Or iPhone one-tap (US Toll): +16469313860,98750807089# or +16465588656,98750807089#
Dear Jean,
What a remarkable tribute on behalf of a remarkable soul! Given you 58 years together,
you certainly know more than any of us how beautiful Larry truly was. My memories of the two of you together at Genesis Farm are as fresh as the morning dew clinging to the blades of grass on the fields at the Farm. I will always remember Larry “coming to the rescue” when there was no “store bought” charcoal available to roast the sack of fresh peppers hauled from Colorado to New Jersey for Autumn Equinox. Larry stepped up and earned the endearing nickname I had for him, “The Amazing Lebanese Charcoal Maker”. As you already know about your sweet partner and our dear friend…he remains as present with us as the stars and the stardust from which we have all emerged!
I will always think of Larry whenever I open a box of salt. My sympathies to you Jean, and to his community. With love, Sr. Janet Lewis
The ‘something wrong with our world right now’ is that it is by definition unfinished. Evil isn’t a measure of how far we’ve fallen than how far we have left to go. One way of living up to our evolutionary potential is to recognize not only the part we play, but the current which carries us farword in the playing of it. The simple recognition of the current is a first step. For example, recognizing how extreme global poverty has been nearly eradicated in only the last 150 years is a good example.
Wow, Matt, what an amazing thought. Yes, “the current which carries us forward” is so powerful. I often think about it as our global collective, and I need to consciously keep in mind that the definition of this current is so broad – it could be seen as our human collective, the biosphere, the geosphere, also the intelligence and purpose to evolve of our entire Universe. And of course, you may have defined it differently in your comment. I am enjoying the awesome thought of the processes within the processes. Thank you for expanding our collective noosphere through your comment!
I love this, Jennifer. Keep up the Great Work that you are now doing for the sake of Gaian Consciousness and Gaia’s cries for help. Thank you!
Thank you, Kendra. A lovely story to remind us to be grateful for the creativity of the Universe and our ancestors!
I love what you have written, especially the part about undoing and evolving! Thank you. I’d love to share this on Facebook! I’d prefer a link, but not sure “outsiders” could reach it. Would you mind if I copied and pasted it to my FB page? I feel it really should be made public!
So great to hear from you, Georgianne! I am honoured that you’d like to share my blog. Thank you. I don’t mind which way you share it, however the easiest and most effective way is to go to the Deeptime Network page on Facebook. Imogene posted the link there – you’ll be able to share and it will be viewable to people who aren’t members on this site too. Or you can just use this link and it is also viewable by everyone: https://dtnetwork.org/when-the-universe-claimed-sovereignty/
I have sent you a friend request on Facebook. =) You’re welcome to reach me through Facebook too.
Hi Viola, sorry to use this site for a different question, but I wanted to ask you about your comment when Brian Swimme was feature on Deeptime Network. You asked him in the comment section if it might be possible for schools to present the Story of the Universe as the third story. Please tell me what would be the first and second stories, assuming Genesis would be one of them. Thanks much!
Roger Edens
[email protected]
Wonderful! I aim to promote it among our Twin Cities Friends Meeting (Quaker) First Day School teachers!!
I learned many wonderful things: alge!, can’t get tall because of the faux roots, 20 times the weight in water. And what a fine moss-covered rock at the center of the screen.
May your effort obtain success!
This is indeed a World Heritage treasure.
Sarbmeet, This is so beautifully said and so inspiring, that They want to devote their careers to making sure that what nature has wrought over 14 billion years is not destroyed because of our frivolous cravings for power and profit.” In my mind and body, I am feeling that “WE, all of us who are reading this, want to devote our careers (especially “WE, the teachers, leaders, and business managers worldwide), are making sure that what nature has wrought is not destroyed because of our frivolous cravings for power and profit.” Thank you for all you do.
Di, this looks wonderful! I will keep in mind for the future. I trust your leadership and the wisdom that will be enfolded and will unfold.. thank you for bringing the gift of your emergence to us all. Lisa
Hi Jennifer. Will Ursula’s interview recording be available for viewing ?
Hello, Di,
I am interested in participating in an Eco-zoic Wisdom Circle. Margaret O’Rourke
[email protected]
As a person who has had to research articles I’ve written, I encountered the Gaia hypothesis what seems like many years ago. I immediately resonated with what James Lovelock said and looked forward to others resonating with it, too. It’s a shame not everyone grasped the theory because it is true. I think I don’t need science to prove to me what is true. I can feel the Truth resonating inside me.
I can’t get this to play. Doesn’t seem to have an activation. From what I remember that you read…to reinvent the humans at a species level… in a time dimensional context by means of story and shared dream experiences… I do see this as our mission, and one that is adopted in time to save Earth? Who knows. But we, our community and other communities who have been part of this course, and others, will be as family in communion.
I see what you mean Linda. I don’t know why the publisher pulled it. That’s too bad. Thomas Berry’s full historic mission is: The historic mission of our times is to reinvent the human at the species level, with critical reflection, within the community of life systems, in a time dimensional context, by means of story and shared dream experience.
Thanks, Jennifer! I’m reading the excerpt from Thomas’s book, which was available as a resource. I’ve watched the full film narrated by Brian. Enjoying everything. So glad I joined.
I so enjoyed this article. How exciting to be a young scientist making a discovery for the first time. I particularly enjoyed the comment about “a preposterous universe”. Weighing the Universe sounds preposterous to me. Reading about such things excites my imagination and curiosity.
“Continuing studies of the cosmic microwaves, along with regular astronomy, have cemented a view of what is sometimes called “a preposterous universe,” of which atomic matter — the stuff of stars and people — composes only 5 percent by weight.”
This brought tears to my eyes. I’ve interviewed Montessori teachers and realize how important they are to a child’s life. Knowing that they teach from the “BIG PICTURE” makes me feel as though every school should be a Montessori school. Losing precious individuals who see the world through that kind of a lens is worthy of tears being shed. Minds like that are so valuable to the world, especially the worlds that belong to the forming of our children’s imagination, curiosity, awe and wonder.
The Sisters all look so happy sharing what they have learnt from you. blessings on their lives and mission. Frances Hayes PBVM Perth West Aust
Love this, Stephan! How beautiful. Is there a transcript? I love your descriptions.
Because we were walking through the countryside and I was creatively sharing about each event, I didn’t have a script I was following. As for a transcript, I don’t have one, but I now remember that the walk and our experience of it was the subject of a Czech-language documentary.
I’d love to do this someplace in the US – walking in nature is such a powerful cosmological experience! Thanks for your comment Kacey. Steve
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