@terrimackenzie
Active 2 years, 7 months agoForum Replies Created
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Here is another proof of your inspired leadership, Jennifer! I love the principles and the efforts being made by so many to gather and formulate them! I have also been inspired by points made in each of the comments so far. Thanks to everyone! We all benefit!
Concerning religious education, placing the beginnings and development of each in an evolutionary context is so important and so often neglected. Speaking from my own RC experience, almost always we start with Genesis rather than placing Genesis where it belongs in the big story. No wonder people get disenchanted. Awe and wonder, of course, are the basics for religion and what more awesome that this story?
Realizing how we all began and are evolving together is a solid basis for anything concerned with action for peace, justice, and overall care of our common home. As Pope Francis says in Laudato Si’: “It cannot be emphasized enough how everything is interconnected. Time and space are not independent of one another, and not even atoms or subatomic particles can be considered in isolation.” (par. 138) I, too, like the way the principles develop and also how they weave in and out of each other: truly interconnected in themselves.
Given my experience helping teachers and parents, I am convinced that no matter how excellent a set of principles, they need individuals who are committed to them. And the reverse: those who are committed will be overflowing and find ways to integrate the principles into everything they do. Thus the importance of the work being done to help teachers and parents understand and fall in love with this transformation in consciousness.
Also the importance of our artists. Leonard Shlain’s Art and Physics presents the hypothesis that artists throughout the world are the first to “get” something new, and that scientists come next and eventually everyone.
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Thanks, Duane! I just checked Shirley’s site and found it beautiful as well as wise. I appreciate what she wrote about GMOs, having just read Jane Brody’s piece in the NYT assuring readers that GMOs were fine and avoiding them was foolish . . . .
PS. I am looking forward to reading The Living Universe next month and catching up with so many who appreciate it!
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<p>Lots of wealth in recent replies! Duane, how super-kind of you to offer us your wonderful Chapter One! I have greatly enjoyed it and gotten many good ideas. It’s an intriguing topic for those of us who vowed Poverty — a word we got saddled with and now try to bring into the 21st century. Your insights will benefit many (obviously way more than just religious)! I’m looking forward to reading your Living Universe!</p><p>Orla, always inspiring to know what you are doing! You alert me that I have not downloaded your fifth chapter, which I shall definitely do asap. I also appreciate your insights about education and that it’s not just a matter for schools (even though you do so much great work there!).</p><p>That said, I want to clarify, Angela, that I am fully involved in, and strongly believe in, action/education on many levels. My comment about sending positive energy related to discussing the Encyclical with people who passionately oppose its contents. It’s challenging to keep calm about things we are passionate about, but minus that, both sides can dig their heels in and negative energy grows. Until those hearts are won, reverse action can result — e.g., the people who dreamed up cars that spewed smog to blast when they passed hybrids or saw people caring for Earth. I know someone who deliberately leaves all the lights on “just to show them”! As for parish education, I arranged with my pastor that I would send him quotes from the document that can be inserted into the bulletins, and I also send sample Prayers of the Faithful to add in each week’s list. We will encourage all parishioners to read the whole thing and have started giving homilies about it. Our parish fund-raiser will be green even though it means losing money that could have been made selling (ugh!) plastic water bottles. We’ll have water stations available, and info on the problems with the bottles. Next Lent my parish will offer my 5-session free resource (Lenten Reflections on Laudato Si’) for prayer groups. Since I’m free to include “FYI” bits as I wish, I am including Universe Story information which I totally agree is basic.</p>
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(Thanks to all so far! Jennifer asked me to add a bit that I sent her in an email. The bit grew!) I have spent time reading and listening to the nay-sayers in hopes of getting clues about what might be the way in. I know from experience that the most effective is treating each person and each complaint with respect, to listen with empathy rather than to scoff or to rebut complaints. For some, the issues focus on fossil fuels, capitalism, fear of government intervention, and resenting the parts that show everything is not just fine as it is. (It’s working for them!) For exceptionally conservative Catholics, there doesn’t seem to be a word they don’t bristle at.In all cases, I suspect the underlying issue is how people identify themselves in relation to creation, others, and “God.” Pope Francis makes it clear, repeatedly, how everything is interconnected and we are part of the whole and thus responsible for it all. Missing that, readers just fall back on what they believed about climate change, etc., last year. But changing self-image and worldview can be a challenging journey! For those of us already agreeing with the document, maybe our call is to send positive energy/ prayer that hearts will open. (My heart is open to your replies!)
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I agree with you, Jennifer. I think it’s a stunning and beautiful document that incorporates every aspect of Earth care and insists on the interconnections. It is grounded firmly in awe of creation and the realization that religion, morality, and ethics combine, even without Scripture, to make Earth care, so inextricably linked with care of the poor, imperative. Alas, the Universe Story is not his issue, and I was sorry — though not surprised — that he started with Genesis in his second chapter. However, there is one spot where he mentions how long humans have been here, or that we’re late-comers, or something similar, and when I write my Lent 2016 5-session resource, I shall recommend that wonderful resource in DTJN with the interactive ways of seeing just how new we are in the story! (I was sorry that he used “Father” almost exclusively, too, but rather than nit-pick a gorgeous document, I shall add a blog on my site about the enrichment one gets from Neil Douglas-Klotz’s Aramaic translation of Our Father and other phrases in that prayer in Prayers of the Cosmos.) It seems obvious that those complaining about his writing this have not read it all, first because they are saying exactly what they said before its release and second because they invariably speak about issues (climate change, economy) that cannot be isolated from the whole document. Here’s another place where Thomas Berry’s words apply: Nothing is itself without everything else! I pray the document is a game-changer for individuals everywhere and especially decision-makers in Paris and those whose “conversion” to care for our common home might make the biggest difference.
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<p>Carol, I’ve been away and just saw this. Very impressed with your reply, Brian. My contribution might not directly relate, but perhaps there will be something that might spark a relevant thought: Tomorrow I hope to be posting a new blog on http://www.ecospiritualityresources.com/Connecting Remembrance Days. Its focus connects war and extinction of species, but I trust the DTJ setting will be clear (if not immediate). If you’d like me to send you an advance pdf, please email [email protected]. </p>
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Concerning when to begin fostering if not facts about evolution, perhaps more importantly, the sense of cosmic awe and perspective: I quote from Madeleine L’Engle. (The entire piece concerns her understanding of God.):
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“One time, when I was little more than a baby, I was taken to visit my grandmother, who was living in a cottage on a nearly uninhabited stretch of beach in northern Florida. All I remember of this visit is being picked up from my crib in what seemed the middle of the night and carried from my bedroom and out of doors, where I had my first look at the stars . . .
The night sky, the constant rolling of breakers against the shore, the stupendous light of the stars, all made an indelible impression on me. I was intuitively aware not only of a beauty I had never seen before but also that the world was far greater than the protected limits of the small child’s world . . . I had a total, if not very conscious, moment of revelation; I saw creation bursting the bounds of daily restriction, and stretching out from dimension to dimension, beyond any human comprehension.
. . .
This early experience was freeing, rather than daunting, and since it was the first, it has been the foundation for all other such glimpses of glory.”
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Perhaps Madeleine was exceptional in her reaction to that experience — or perhaps that experience helped her to become exceptional. -
Several things impress and encourage me as I read the excellent piece on planes of development and the comments so far. The whole concept of planes (fields, spirals, whatever) is so pertinent to everything DTJN is about. But, beyond that, how wonderful for me, formed in the “school” of Teilhard de Chardin-Thomas Berry-Miriam Macgillis-Brian Swimme-Mary Evelyn Tucker, etc., to realize how many other approaches exist; the message needn’t be — and isn’t — a “monoculture”! Here, too, diversity brings strength. This is both enlightening and challenging (or maybe frustrating) as it’s hard to find time to explore these other paths, all so enticing! It’s also heartening to discover that things familiar to me (like the Earth Charter) are sometimes new to others, so I don’t have everything to learn!
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How fortunate I am to have time to listen to the gorgeous music in the Celtic Mass a mere day after March 17th. If St. Patrick’s celebrations could all incorporate such beauty, what a sacred day it would become! Obviously it’s a gift for any day. Many thanks for creating it and for alerting me/us to its existence. I was also grateful to read Larry’s references to the Cosmic Walk and Genesis Farm. My first experience of a cosmic walk was thanks to Miriam Therese (GEA symposium in 1979). I have always thought she was the originator, though I’m not sure. Whoever started it did a great service to the very many who have prayed it since. I look forward to seeing the variations on that theme. Jennifer, I have suggested to Mary Alice and several others that they check out this group. I hope they all participate! It is so heartening to learn about all those committed to telling the deep time story and to gaining insights into ways of sharing and living it!
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The posts ahead of mine are so rich! Thank you, Jennifer, Orla, Sam and Paula! When I first learned about this forum (and possibly the reason Jennifer suggested I join it), I had in mind rituals like those on my site (Stardust Wednesday, Winter Solstice, and World Environment Day). But reading your posts, and thinking deeper, the options expanded. Orla’s birthday ritual reminded me of the Universe Story cards that Mary Alice Dooley makes ([email protected]). Opening 12 tabs, starting with Our Story Begins and continuing until 40,000 years ago, leads to the now-open card that celebrates the life of the birthday person who was born 13.7 billion years ago. Sending these would become a similar ritual to Orla’s. How one starts the day is surely a ritual — some bodily or musical signs of awareness that we are rotating as we hurl around our Star; aware where we are in time and space? Beginnings and endings of contemplative times; ditto for meals. And music! Yes, all the arts. I admit to being woefully remiss about dancing. My sisters from Nigeria and Ghana do it so spontaneously, and I would benefit from encouragement. (An anti-trafficking group encouraged everyone to dance for five minutes last week to send energy to stop trafficking. I made sure I did it, sent around the email, and later learned that 15 sisters at our Infirmary joined in dancing for this cause!) I’m looking forward to finding time to continue exploring this important topic with you!
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