@laurahawkins
Active 7 years, 3 months agoForum Replies Created
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Someone else must be cooking for you gentlemen today! While cooking up collard greens and carrots, a new cranberry sauce experiment and sweet potatoes for a shared meal, I came across this little video with a big message (part of the Nature Speaks series). Happy Thanksgiving and many many thanks for this network.
Laura Hawkins
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“But I’m wondering about practical applications in this
Anthropocene Age. As we continue to shut down Earth’s life-support systems, are we learning anything about how to carry out our work as Earth-system triage workers trying to preserve Earth’s life-giving gifts from the universe?”Thank you for your question, Mike. Like you and some others here I’m also in the universe is alive perspective, but I don’t have the background to even try for scientific explanations for why I experience this to be true. What I do have is witnessing to how many times both children and adults delight in contemplating the “is the universe alive” question, and other questions about the creation of our universe and what our right place is in the great order of things.
In reflecting back to Laudato Si, which does ask “everyone on the planet” to be part of answering the important and practical question you raise, the encyclical begins with the human capacity for awe and wonder. For me, this capacity is a form of love and connection and a suspension of my own self as center of the universe. It creates openings that can move away from anthropocentrism and toward the triage work for healing our (most of our) relationship to Earth and each other in practical and spiritual ways.
I know that I’m not telling you anything new here. I’m only pointing it out because I think it is, in itself. a practical application that has become lost in our public educational system and in most of our lifestyles and daily habits. One of the reasons I also enjoy following these conversations is because it does bring back the expansive play between the dust on the shelves and the stars in the night sky. (that’s a bad quote from somewhere!)
Then again, I love your question and hope that many answers come forth here. As another sometimes passionate activist I need them too.
Laura Hawkins
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Brandon,
This sounds like a wonderfully creative program. Last year I wanted to introduce a group of children at a Quaker Meeting/school to Creation stories. However, I didn’t start by telling them stories because I had a hunch that they would create their own story that would have elements similar to ones they would be hearing.
They came into a room where a long blank scroll was laid across 2 tables and several baskets of crayons. To warm them up to what they would be drawing on the table I asked them to give examples of human-made creations. Then, where did the materials humans use for their creations come from? And then, what do those examples need to be alive and stay alive (one child actually said love!), or how did they come to exist? (we used their examples). If you were to create a planet earth, I asked, what would you need to create so that life could be there day by day and night by night? Draw or write your ideas on the scroll.
This may not be the best way to ask the questions, but as suspected, these children pretty much came up with a Creation story similar to the one in Genesis. They created light, air, stars, oceans, water, etc. If a child drew a bird, for example, I asked what the bird needed to live, and on and on. The huge advantage to this approach showed up when they were asked if they would like to hear a story how life was created and if it was similar to theirs. They were very interested and engaged to see if it was as good as their own.
Now that I’m learning more from DTJN I would ask the next BIG question. And where did the stars come from and what does the crayon in your hand have to do with them? Would you like to hear a story about that? A year from now I may have better questions!
I would be very interested to know if your children would also write/draw a Creation story similar to the one in Genesis if they were asked to create the basic needs for life on their planet. I’m wondering what prompts they would need to draw stories from different cultures. Interesting that they created the one from Genesis.
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To Everyone in this discussion,
For the past week I’ve been following this conversation with immense interest. I look forward to taking time out in the evening to see if there are new posts.
As a result, I began to ask people in various local places if they believe that the universe is a living system. I’ve asked bank tellers, multi-cultural ping pong players at a senior center, children at a playground, a Hispanic mother who needed help translating the question and communicating her answer, and while in line at a supermarket. Yesterday I had a most unusual opportunity. I was IN the ocean off of Ocean Grove, NJ. I honed in on a bearded fellow who looked like he would not think it too weird to have a woman he never met bobbing up in the surf next to him with…”do you mind if I ask you a question?” His answer was an immediate “Sure!! And you don’t have to be in the ocean to get that answer. I experience it all the time”.
During the first few days of asking the question I focused on the answer. Then I began to notice an unexpected commonality. Everyone enjoyed the question and some showed deep pleasure in reflecting on it. You could see them opening into themselves as if some connection between their DNA and infinite outer time and space held an answer. Their intellect played with organizing possibilities. A mathematician and composer answered that “if the universe is alive, then everything is alive”. His friend questioned his meaning of “everything”. “Does that include human made things like cars and cell phones?” The mathematician’s reply was “yes, everything, at some level, is alive”. It surprised me. I was not for cars and cell phones being alive but his explanations made me reconsider.
Whatever the answer, it was an unforgettable respite into imaginings about our universe and why sharing our answers and stories and scientific knowledge is so intimately valuable for everyone…and…. the universe as well. Thank you. Next time you stop for gas or take a train……..
Laura Hawkins
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