Ask a Cosmologist

Jennifer Morgan, president and founder of the Deeptime Network, is an award-winning author, storyteller, and educator inspired by the work of Teilhard de Chardin, Maria Montessori, Thomas Berry, and Brian Swimme. Her Universe Story Trilogy — Born With a Bang, From Lava to Life, and Mammals Who Morph — are used in classrooms around the world, particularly in Montessori schools as part of the Cosmic Education Curriculum, and have received the Teachers Choice Award, Nautilus Semi Finalist, highest ratings from AAAS and endorsements from Jane Goodall, Neil de Grasse Tyson, astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme and others. She is Vice President of the American Teilhard Association. Her life inspiration is to foster emergence by helping to link a planetary nervous system of people immersed in this radical new understanding.

Stephan Martin is an astronomer, educator, and author who has taught astronomy, physics, and consciousness studies at colleges, universities, and learning centers across the US for over twenty-five years. Between 2003-2008 he studied directly with Brian Swimme and others at the California Institute of Integral Studies, out of which came his first book Cosmic Conversations, in which he held dialogues with scientists, spiritual teachers, and cultural creatives on the nature of the universe and our role in it. Since then he has led workshops on the New Cosmology at seminars and retreat centers across the US and Europe and has been active in exploring multidisciplinary approaches to exploring the universe. He is currently adjunct faculty in the Consciousness and Transformative Studies graduate program at John F Kennedy University where he teaches a course on “Cosmology and Consciousness.” Steve is also a co-director of the continuing care program at the Center for Spiritual Emergence in Asheville, NC where he assists clients in living more conscious lives from an expansive perspective.

Brian Thomas Swimme is director of the Third Story at the Human Energy Project, which seeks to disseminate the cosmology of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He is professor emeritus at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. A specialist in gravitational dynamics, his work for many years has been to bring the context of story to our understanding of the 13.8 billion year trajectory of the universe. Such a story, he feels, will assist in the emergence of a flourishing Earth community. He is the author of several well known and influential books and is co-author with Thomas Berry on The Universe Story and with Mary Evelyn Tucker on the award-winning book and film Journey of the Universe. His latest book is Cosmogenesis.

Penny Andrews, D.Min, MA, has had a lifelong interest in spirituality, creativity and consciousness as paths to intuition and deeper knowing. This passion led to the study of forms of art as meditation at the University of Creation Spirituality. She is an ordained interfaith minister, and during her career as a hospital chaplain applied a variety of healing modalities in her work with patients and family caregivers of all spiritual backgrounds. A retreat leader and Earth activist, Penny been actively involved in Creation Spirituality, The Work that Reconnects, the Earth Charter and DeepTime studies. Currently, she guides a weekly Work that Reconnects meditation, offers a monthly webinar with Gail Ransom called Creation in Crisis, serves on the board of directors of Creation Spirituality Communities, is a regular speaker at a local Unitarian Universalist congregation, and provides spiritual companioning for others. She is co-creating a food forest on the drumlin in Wisconsin where she has lived for 30 years. She’s a certified Deeptime Leader with the Deeptime Network.

Lisa Verni, LCSW, is a seasoned psychotherapist, deeptime consultant, writer, artist, and dancer who loves helping people live their authentic lives through alignment with the Universe. Stephan Martin sees her as a ‘cosmic lamplighter’ because of her particular gift of reflecting back people’s radiant energy to develop their allurements. Lisa holds degrees in Business/Marketing and Clinical Social Work from NYU, and is a Certified Deeptime Leader. In completing her Emergence Project, Lisa created an artistic and therapeutic offering called “Dancing with the Pain”. It is meant to inspire hope and understanding through the embodiment and expression of a Deeptime Perspective. It can be found at www.dancingwiththepain.org. Lisa lectures on topics such as ‘Applying A Deeptime Perspective to Psychotherapy’ and ‘On Creative Process’, and will be joining us throughout the program to share her Emergences. Please feel free to contact her directly at [email protected] for mentoring and Deeptime Conversation.

Gerardo López-Amaro joins us from Mexico where he engages in activist scholarship around Buen Vivir, ecopedagogies and practices of re-existence. He explores ways to highlight the experiments to co-create viable alternatives to the current system and address the global challenges of our times. He is a PhD candidate in Anthropology and Social Change by the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) of San Francisco, where he wonders about the possibilities for the emergence of the pluriverse even in dense liberal societies learning with grassroots movements. He is also part of the Steering Committee of the Ecoversities Alliance.

Orla Hazra, PhD currently lives in Sarasota Florida after recently returning from ten years in Mumbai, India. While in India she developed a curriculum to renew the Ignatian (Jesuit) Pedagogical Paradigm, applying it at St. Xavier’s College and at Tarumitra, an ecoliteracy center in Patna. Her academic formation in recreation leadership, addiction counseling, and spiritual direction, led her into a PhD program in Religious Education, from Fordham University; her research becoming a model for educational reform considering the fourfold wisdom conversation suggested by Thomas Berry — science, religion, women and indigenous peoples. She is a founding board member of the Deeptime Network and is delighted to be witnessing the model in practice, healing our trauma of separation.

Kacey Amrita Carmichael, MA, MEd, sees the Universe unfolding as YOU! She delights in helping you experience this directly, through embodied creative and meditative arts. To this she brings the dynamic synergy of her experience as an expressive arts psychotherapist; ordained interfaith minister, ritual leader and spiritual counselor; Certified Deeptime Leader; Waldorf educator; mindful yoga and meditation teacher; mother; cosmos lover; and lifelong mystic, writer, and dancer. Grounded in her rigorous education at Harvard and Yale as well as decades of artistic and contemplative practices in several modalities and traditions, she’s known to help people enter into deep creativity and intuitive knowing. She works with individuals and groups, creating community and together celebrating the creative ecstasy of the 14 billion year brilliant beloved unfolding we are. She has some availability for expressive arts-based deeptime/spiritual counseling, movement and writing groups, or retreat, ritual and ceremony leadership at [email protected]. In the 90’s Kacey wrote a book called Going Direct, on the writing that emerges from the practice of Authentic Movement. In decades of practicing and teaching AM, she has developed this into a Deeptime Cosmogenesis practice.

Elena Pardo: Educator, cultural manager and promoter of intra- and intercultural education in urban and rural areas of the Cusco Region, Peru. She is director of CEPROSI and speaker at conferences, forums and events at regional, national and international levels. Promotes the Watunakuy (international seed event) that has been held for 19 years at the Raqchi Ceremonial Center, an international meeting for the exchange of collective healing and the exchange of seeds. He is a member of the Watunakuy Ayllu Network and the Ecoversities Network.

Yona FrenchHawk is a full-blooded Cherokee Wisdom Keeper and Ceremonialist. He was born and raised on the Qualla Indian Boundary and is an enrolled member of The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in the Great Smoky Mountains in Cherokee, N.C., the Cherokee Indian Reservation. Yona offers his BirdClan gift of song, storytelling, plus insights into the prophesies and ceremonies of the Eastern Cherokees. This knowledge bridges the ancient past with the deep future. We honor their voices and visions of ancestors by sharing the abundance life has to offer. Yona offers individual sessions to assist in being present in one’s current journey while connecting with ancestral healing. Yona helps to connect with one’s roots to truly live an organic green way of life and embrace the legacy of connecting cultures by understanding what fruit to bear according to our roots.For more info:http://www.yonafrenchhawk.com/