The Cosmic Walk: one giant step toward “thinking in a new way”
Sister Miriam Therese MacGillis’ keynote address, “Fate of the Earth,” was about a new way of thinking that related our chaotic everyday surface level reality to deeper dimensions of reality.
I was on a sabbatical leave, and my first stop was a conference on religion and science at a retreat center in Indiana. MacGillis, a Dominican sister who founded Genesis Farm, an Earth Literacy center in New Jersey, led the first program I attended.
She told of experiencing a now-moment much like the one I experienced at the meeting of the Council of Grandmothers when the boy asked me what I was going to do now that I knew. At the time she was teaching art in a Catholic school. One of her students, a young girl, began to ask her hard questions she could not answer. MacGillis told how this “child” raised such doubts in her mind. Doubts about the environmental mess adults were making that their children would inherit. Doubts about world hunger, about the war in Vietnam, about all the issues MacGillis had preferred to leave to the men chiefs.
She wanted to believe the chiefs knew what they were doing. Her student convinced her they didn’t know. This “child” had done her research. MacGillis had no context for understanding the real world her student was revealing to her. She entered into painful time of searching.
During this time she heard Father Thomas Berry give a lecture about a new way of thinking that filled her with hope for the future. The new way of thinking was imbedded in a new story that affirmed the deep spiritual wisdom of religion and the deep empirical wisdom of science. The story described the basic dynamism of human existence in the context of Earth’s chapter in the Universe story. It was a Creation story about a living relationship that began with the creation of the first atoms of hydrogen and helium. It was a now-story of breakthrough, convergence, the destruction of the old and the invasion of the new and unforeseen. It was the story of a sacred journey in which humankind had a role to play—a role in which all the good and evil in humans was maturing. It was a mystery story full of suspense. It was about a now moment of breakthrough in the 20th century in which a decisive response would be required.
I knew nothing about this new way of thinking before I arrived for the conference on religion and science. Everyone in the audience seemed to know what to expect except me. When MacGillis concluded her keynote presentation, she received a standing ovation.
The crowd quickly moved outside but did not disperse. I was caught up in a human stream of flashlights heading toward a dimly lit building in the distance. The night sky was clear, giving me an unobstructed view of a sampling of the billion of galaxies Carl Sagan had said were there. Along the way we passed under great oak trees and maple trees that blotted out the pin pricks of light overhead. In the shadow of the trees we were serenaded by swarming cicadas.
Inside the building, on the floor, a great spiraling pathway had been laid out with white string and lit by glowing candles. The spiral followed the curvature of space-time. Each candle represented an historic landmark in the new story. Each landmark was a breakthrough to a new inner dimension of reality. MacGillis had described the cosmic walk that would follow her presentation. In walking the string path, we would follow the journey followed by the Universe, Earth, life, and consciousness from the creation of the first hydrogen and helium to the closing decades of the 20th century.
The candle-lighted string enabled me, one slow step at a time, to experience the amazing journey during which emerged all inner reality and outer reality known to humans. It enabled me to remember and reconnect to four historic breakthroughs in the Universe story. Each of these breakthroughs was a “turning point” that signaled a transition to a radical new dimension of freedom. A path that had been viable for millions or billions of years would end. Another path with new freedoms and new potentials would begin.
In leading the cosmic walk, MacGillis made each new path, each new chapter of the story come alive. We were reminded that we carried in our bodies the same hydrogen and helium atoms that began the first freedom experiment billions of years ago. Inside the cells of our bodies were the same Prokaryotic one-cell bacteria that began the journey of life on Earth four billion years ago. We could not live without them.
A transcript of Sister Miriam Therese MacGillis’ “Fate of the Earth” speech will be available from the 7grrp Archives. Following is an Earth Literacy Response Form to concepts included in her presentation:
Earth Literacy Response & Discussion Form
TAPE: “Fate of the Earth”
SPEAKER: Miriam Therese MacGillis, O.P.
Write after each concept which ones you MOST AGREE with or MOST DISAGREE with. Also write which concepts are most CLEAR and most UNCLEAR; which are most EXCITING and MOST BORING. Then, take time to discuss. If some participants respond to the same concepts in opposite ways, they might want to share with each other why they responded as they did. Share, but don't debate whose answer is right or wrong.
1. In this time of “supreme crisis,” we deeply need a transforming vision that opens the future to new hope.
2. If our images of the future are negative, we will live out of them and bring them about as self-fulfilling prophecies.
3. We must pay attention to, but not be paralyzed by the signs of our time: greed, destructiveness, and moral and ethical failure. They are not the source of our real crisis.
4. Our real crisis is a crisis in cosmology, in our story of a “ready-made” universe with no spiritual dimension, and with humans as separate from that universe.
5. We now see that the universe is not “ready-made” but is “in process” and that it has had a deep spiritual interior from its beginning.
6. As tiny, fragile persons, the life of each of us can be significant; and it is no accident that we are born now; that we find our lives unfolding now.
7. The old woman who planted dates that would not bear fruit for 80 years knew that “hope is a choice.” We must learn that lesson.
8. The cosmology of Native Americans (not their religion) shaped the moral and economic systems which caused them to regard all creation as sacred and everything in nature as related.
9. Both modern science and ancient spiritual traditions teach us that the cosmology of our modern “civilization” is completely inadequate; our institutions are based on assumptions that are untrue.
10. The universe, from the first unfolding of hydrogen, helium, and carbon atoms, has had a divine source. Thus, the universe unfolds not only in an exterior material dimension, but also in an interior spiritual dimension.
11. The human is the being in which the earth has awakened into consciousness; become spiritually aware and self-reflective. You are the unfolding universe thinking about itself. You are irreplaceable and unrepeatable.
12. This is the anguish of our time: we now know that our basic assumptions are not working, and we do not have a roadmap or an ethic to pass on.
13. Human consciousness is now taking control of the creation process itself. That process depended on a finely balanced automatic control which assured the sustainability of life on earth. With powerful new human technologies, we are taking the process off of “automatic.”
14. The most profound question is: Have humans arrived at a level of wisdom and maturity (spiritual interiority) to take control of the creation process on earth?
15. The above question is not one of “ethics.” We don't yet have the ethics we need. We have all kinds of “good people.” But “goodness” doesn't matter if they operate out of an old cosmology and use assumptions that don't work.
16. We poison the fluids of the living earth because we think of them as “oceans,” as distant places convenient for dumping our lethal garbage. When oceans become toxic, rain will become toxic, and our tears will become toxic. We will be unable to baptize our children with toxic water and tell them about God.
17. If, through us, the planet commits its own act of suicide, it won't be because we are evil. It will be because we think we have a full deck of cards and we don't. We're dealing like mad and waiting for the card to come up that will save us. It won't. It's not in the deck.
18. Physicists and astronauts are seeing, empirically, a new revelation of how the universe has been manifested and unfolded. They speak of that revelation in theological and ethical terms. With unprecedented humility, they are leading the earth out of its adolescent fixation to a new level of maturity. They are not “better people,” but they have a whole other view of what life is about.
19. We have buried 50,000 “tumors” under the skin of the planet. They are wired into the nervous system of the earth with computers, so that if one goes off all will go off.
20. The new empirical revelations of physics confirm, rather than deny, ancient intuitive revelations of earth's spiritual traditions. The “new story” expands and compliments our ancient moral code.
21. Following are three principles now understood as the basis for why the universe has unfolded as it has, and why our particular planet is so resplendent with life. The first principle is “Differentiation” which means the universe is coded to become more and more different in its component parts. The second principle is “Interiority” which means that everything has its own truth; and, at its deepest depths, no thing is material. The third principle is “Communion” which means that from the beginning the universe has been in communion with itself. No differentiated interiority can exist alone. It only can exist as a member of a bonded community which has evolved totally mutually independent with itself. (Z43)
22. If you look at the crust of the earth or the oceans, you see living systems in which all of the organisms are essential. At a very deep stage, all are working together to make the earth more capable of life and consciousness.
23. The earth has evolved as a single communion, both externally in the material composition of its living fabric and internally in its psychic development. There are no empty spaces, no islands. In that communion, the electromagnetic field holds everything together, but it does not demand conformity. Conformity and community are diametrically opposed. Uniformity is evil – a violation of truth.
24. When physicists get in touch with the deep, immeasurable interior spaces within an atom, they find that the same interior is the center of all interiors. These spaces are coming into existence and going out of existence in energy patterns from a source that is being created at the moment. And whatever an atom is expressed as – whether it be Mozart or a redwood tree – it is a revelation; it is truth. And in that process of coming into existence and going out of existence, the universe has expanded; and now we are the beings in whom the universe can finally comprehend the truth.
25. Physicists are saying that if we don't learn the above truth fast, we are going to die. In this century close to a million species will be sent into extinction and millions of people slaughtered because of their differentiation; because we don't understand their interiority. This is totally against the laws of the universe. That wisdom lost will never be regained. That voice will never be a revelation of the Creator which it was meant to be. We simply do not understand revelation. We cut down the temples to make temples.
26. Different elements interact with each other and cause each other to change. In changing, what is released from within each is the potential for becoming more. Thus, the microbes interacting in the soil are our farmers. They release the potential for agriculture; and they, not we, produce our food.
27. All humans reflect on reality and seek in the interiority of their being a deeper meaning of things. These reflections are differentiated, and they become the revelations of different religions which hold people together in communion. That is why a Jew isn't a Hindu; a Hindu isn't a Christian; and a Christian isn't a Buddhist.
28. All humans use their meaning systems and their language to reflect on their history and their experiences. These reflections are differentiated, and they shape the different cultures which hold people together in communion. That is why Polish isn't Greek; Greek isn't Russian; and Russian isn't Eskimo.
29. Once humans reflect on reality and are able to say the truth of their being, they are susceptible to seeing their truth as the only truth. Other people who do not have “their truth” may be considered less than human. This makes it OK to enslave them or annihilate them.
30. If we are truly human we will have the capacity to celebrate the differences that come out of the design of the One who coded in the differences to begin with. Rather than “differentiation” being the problem to solve, it is the solution. No one consciousness can totally reflect what is infinite. Delight in our differences is the proper mode of the human.
31. Physicists are telling us that diversity in human consciousness is as essential to life on earth as diversity within the mineral and animal and vegetable kingdoms. If we do not learn this, we will continue (as very good people who don't lie and who love our kids) to live lives that violate the very process by which the universe is coded by its Creator. Whatever institutions do not teach us to love our differences are dangerous and nonfunctional for the future.
32. We are beginning to understand that the human is the being in which earth's communion is understood with awareness and freedom. That understanding is love. Love is the bonding of the planet. Love is to delight in the differences of others. The more you delight in me, the more I become capable of compassion, mercy, gentleness, justice, integrity, and peace. Such love brings out of us the deepest mysteries of the universe. And it is this love physicists are saying we must learn and internalize in our institutions and in our education.
33. Each of our great spiritual traditions represents an intuitive journey in understanding of earth's communion. In the Judeo-Christian tradition the people of Israel came to a new consciousness of God as not many and arbitrary but as loving and life-giving. In that moment of breakthrough Israel entered into covenant to be obedient to God's laws as revealed to Moses. Those laws were an articulation of the three principles of differentiation, interiority and communion – the truth of the universe. And out of obedience to that truth, Israel was to bring the energy of God into time and place.
34. Our new cosmology teaches us two things:
First, we've got to come home. We are literally a star’s way or thinking about a star. We've got to own our identification with the earth and the spiritual dynamics of the universe. We can not have life and nourishment, except that it comes out of the earth, which is our very body. And if the earth is sick, we will be sick. We can't exist unless we can coexist with the unique conditions of biological life in the community we call home. We must learn to live in total obedience to the law (the three principles, the truth), or we will be kicked out as a bad experiment.
Second, we've got to redefine what we mean by security. We are the first humans to go off into space and look back. We have a new image of who we are. We have looked back and seen the wholeness of earth's beauty, the magnitude of it, and the silence in which it finds itself. From space, the boundaries of 150-odd nation states are invisible. Yet, we continue to mobilize to compete; and that very competition is causing the death of the air and the soil and the water. Security means communion and cooperation. It means we must find unity in our differences. There still will be tension and conflict. But if we can get over our obsession with uniformity, we are going to make it. We have a whole “new story” that can give us hope.