Welcome to this idea of Living Within a Universe Story. First of all, we know we have a need for story as humans. It's what orients and crowns us, it's what motivates and inspires us. What awakens our imagination, moves us to action, and gives us a sense of our place and our role in a large scheme of things. We know that there is creation stories around the world that have given people that same sense of orienting and grounding them in the vast community of life. The one in the West has been a Genesis Story, inspiring Judaism and Christianity, the tale of Adam and Eve, the paradise lost. But, there are other creation stories, such as the Hopi Origin Story in the Southwest. There, there's a sense of the emergence from other worlds into this world. And you can see in this petroglyph in Mesa Verde National Park, this spiral centering of the emergent place. Which is still marked in every kiva in the Hopi communities, that place of emergence. Now, Japanese Creation Myths also have that sense of coming forth from another world. This is Amaterasu, the sun goddess coming forth from the cave. And this marvelous mythology emerged in the 8th century in books of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. The descendants of all the emperors in Japan have come from Amaterasu, the sun goddess, this shining force in the heavens. Now, this was changed radically with the emergence of the origin of species in 1859 of Darwin. All of a sudden the sense of traditional cosmologies, creation stories, cosmogonies, were changed radically, with a sense of developmental time, with a sense of change in Earth and species, and even in the universe itself as it emerged. So that first sense of Earth rise that we got from the space ships in 1968, it was an amazing moment when we could actually visualize ourselves from the Moon to the Earth, this living blue green planet. It's an image which changed just forever. Now in 1978, Thomas Berry wrote an article called A New Story, and that is the basis of this living cosmology, journey of the universe story and courses. The sense of a new story is that it integrates science and humanities, it's a story evolution with a sense of awe and wonder. It's a functional cosmology that activates human energy for ecological and social change, and it also broadens our values and ethics that are emerging now within the context of an epic of evolution, a new story for our times. Thoma Berry who lived until he was 94, born in Greensboro, lived most of his life in New York, but traveled widely around the world, first wrote a book with Brian Swimme that was published in 1992. Brian being a mathematical cosmologist especially studying the early universe, the emergence of stars and galaxies. This was the first telling in book form of The Universe Story from that great flaring forth down to the present. Then some years later, Brian Swimme and I wrote Journey of the Universe, which is the basis of these courses. And this is the book that Yale published, but it's also been translated into French, Italian, and Spanish, Russian, and Turkish, Chinese, and Korean, and soon Indonesian, and Arabic. The film won an Emmy, a regional Emmy, and that would be part of these courses as well. It's been shown on PBS here in the US for three years. It's on Amazon Prime streaming, iTunes. But internationally, it's been shown on every continent, in Latin America, in Spanish, in Europe, in Asia, Australia, and Africa. The conversations, which will also be part of these courses, are an educational series that we developed, a series of interviews. The first ten are with scientists and historians and they relate the evolutionary story to deepen our understanding of the science, the geological deep time and the history of humans and their emergent. The next 10 are Environmentalists, largely who relate the great work. And this includes people talking about Eco cities. How are we going to live in cities, which where humans are moving in rapid numbers around the globe? What about an ecological economics, what about education? How does this impact race? All of this is part of the very dynamic conversations, the journey of the universe, pointing towards the great work that needs to be done in our times. Now, this evolutionary context then of deep time. We have kind of a bi-focal, if you will, we're aware more and more of evolution, of deep time and the beauty and complexity of this emergent unfolding process of evolution. But we're also aware of extinction, of destruction, of loss, of what's happening to our planet, to ecosystems, and species, to human cultures and civilizations. So both beauty and destruction, creativity and loss, are part of our moment and how we deal with this and navigate it is the challenge of these courses. We know we have tremendous ecological and social challenges, climate change, moving towards eco justice, how are the poor being impacted around the globe with climate change? Biodiversity loss, we're understanding now that we're in the 6th extinction period. The others being caused by climate change, by weather related issues, even by a cataclysmic hitting of a meteor, the Yucatan Peninsula where the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. But now we're causing these extinctions and we know pollution and toxicity is widespread, permeating water systems, soil systems. Food security in many parts of the world is a real issue. How will we feed our children with safe and healthy food? Increased inequities around the globe with extreme wealth and poverty of the developing world and developed world in very uneasy tensions. And finally consumerism is the dream of progress of materialism and consumption, the only dream for humans at this stage of a life journey. We are now Now in what's being called the Anthropocene era. This term came up in 2000 by Paul Crutzen, and it implies that we are in an age of human induced planetary change. Now the scientists and geologists in particular, are debating these changes as they rightly should. But it's worth noting that Thomas Barry had this notion that we're moving from an even larger geological era, from the cenozoic 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs went extinct to what he called the ecozoic. And he made us aware that we are in the midst of the sixth extinction period. And yet, awakening to a new intimacy with the Universe and the Earth community. In fact, this Journey of the Universe tells us, we are stardust. The stars are our ancestors and this notion that we come out of the explosion of supernovas, that all the elements of carbon-based life literally have come from supernova explosions. So, our ancestry is actually cosmic universe ancestry, not only our Earth. But the Earth itself developed between what we'd call the rocky planets and the gaseous planets. It's a dynamic living planet often likened to a living cell. And just the right temperature and atmosphere, the conditions for life on this volcanic planet emerged with plate tectonics and so on. A 4.6 billion year journey for the emergence of various forms of life. But even the first single cell took a billion years for it to emerge. And then plants, multicellular creatures and plants began to explode around the planet. Lauren Isley speaks of when flowers changed the world, changed the color landscape of the world. Animals clearly are companions. Now we know companions and consciousness, companions and sensibilities of migration patterns, of movements, that are similar to humans who create culture, and in their own migrating patterns. Now, the sense then, that we are in a great transition, has been noted by Paul Raskin of the Tellus institute in Boston, and by Joanna Macy, who calls it a great turning, this particular moment, she's a systems theorist, Buddhist practitioner. This insight that we're at a great moment is, I think, around the world at this point in time. We know now that in this great transition moment that we're living within a universe story that's what's new and exciting. Thomas Berry used to call this a Functional Cosmology meaning an epic story of evolution that inspires the Great Work of our time. We're calling it a Living Cosmology, an integrating story for the transition to a flourishing future, not just a sustainable future, a flourishing future for the whole earth community. Now this is going to require a sense of looking at the modern enlightenment values that shaped earlier peoples, largely for individualism. Namely life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness the great aims of the French Revolution of Modernity. But now we know we're part of the interconnectedness of life, we're woven into life. And Ecology and the Community of Life is giving us a new sense of this web of interdependence, of relationality, and of flourishing. So human connections are not only human and humans, but humans and Earth, and ecosystems, and other species. So new values are needed. Life is the interdependence of species, liberty is relationality and happiness is living in flourishing Earth Community. You can see this expansion of values that's happening, because of this new story. Now some examples of this that are already in our midst are the Papal encyclical, called Laudato Si, where Pope Francis identifies integral ecology. And what does that mean? Well, he's saying humans and Earth have a new moment of integration. And he's evoking social justice part of the Catholic progressive teachings of social justice, but also environmental ethics. And he's putting those together in terms that have been emerging for sometime of eco justice. And this since encyclical is inspiring people around the globe for a new integrated sense of ecology that includes people and ecosystems. Now, we also have another example, movement that's actually happening despite the evidence to the contrary of violence and war. But we're moving from competing nation states to the flourishing of multi cultural planetary civilization. This is not always visible in our news, but the idea is, we're moving from a Declaration of Independence to a Declaration of Interdependence. What does that mean? Specifically, for a period of almost ten years, the Earth Charter emerged. Its preamble emphasizes cosmology, that we're part of a fast evolving universe. And Earth our home, this beautiful planet is alive like a living cell. And the three sections that come together are Ecological Integrity, Social and Economic Justice, Democracy, Non-violence, and Peace. We need to support ecosystems, we need to see economic systems within nature's economy. And we need institutions of democracy and peace to actually move forward in a coherent and flourishing way. This earth charter emerged from the Rio Earth Summit, the first and largest gathering to that moment of heads of state around the world who came together to say how are we going to balance environmental protection and sustainable development? And this charter emerged from that process. Now we also have evidence of grassroots movements of interdependence. This march in New York in September, 2014 was the largest of its kind- 400,000 people, including people from religious communities. From ecological communities, from the business communities, from grassroots led at the very front by indigenous groups from all over the world. Now, as well, the protest against the encroachment of industries such as gas and oil into very pristine areas and our coastal properties, coastal waters has resulted in the same sense. We are interdependent and we can't afford to lose these beautiful areas, water areas, the arctic refugee and so on. So, Journey of the Universe then is an integrating story. It's bringing together science and humanities. It's suggesting this interdependence of life, of species, which is new for many in the human community and, yet of course, ancient and old, especially for indigenous peoples. But we have now this sense of how are we going to include the human community, the refugee crisis of millions of people around the world from environmental droughts, flooding, the exhaustion of land, and so on. So what is our ethical responsibility, our sense of care for humans and Earth. It's changing, it's expanding, it's growing within this context of a universe story. What we're trying to do then, to summarize is a broadening participation in the whole for humans. We're suggesting that Journey of the Universe is awe that evokes action. It inspires reverence towards responsibility. And it gives us an ethics for the common good, an ethics of comprehensive compassion, if you will, that has been part of religious traditions and philosophies around the world for a long time. That's the broadening that Journey of the Universe brings into play. That's a living cosmology, the inspiring vision and the great work on the ground. [MUSIC]
