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Community Corner

The Universe Story - Free Public Seminar

The Universe Story

with Miriam MacGillis of Genesis Farm

A free public seminar, Friday, May 30th, 6:45-9:00pm

67 Church St, Montclair (Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Montclair)
Peierls Room (left-hand annex building, go upstairs and turn right)

A culture’s belief about how the Universe came to be created, and how the human community came to be a part of the Universe is really the background for everything else the culture believes. That we are separate is a deep and fundamental part of the cultural story that we, in the industrialized world, have lived in for hundreds of years. In the last eighty years or so, the science of cosmology has gradually come to espouse a single story of how the Universe and all living things were created. And, interestingly, this story, which is rooted in science, is one that shares many fundamental aspects of what most indigenous people believe about the Earth and creation—namely that we are all profoundly interconnected and interdependent, at both the micro level and the macro level. In this first session, inspired by the work of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme, we explore this new cultural story and its implications through a combination of lecture, discussion and video. When viewed through this expanded context, current issues like fracking, GMOs and tar sands oil extraction are seen in a new light.

“The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.”
Thomas Berry

“The earth was once molten rock and now sings operas.”
Brianne Swimme

Miriam MacGillis is the founder and director of Genesis Farm Earth Literacy Center (www.genesisfarm.org) and has been named by www.grist.org, a top environmental news web site, as one of the top 15 green spiritual leaders in the world today. 

For information: contact Silke Springorum at silkespr7@gmail.com

This seminar is the first in a free public seminar series on Deep Ecology, dedicated to us experiencing ourselves as part of the living Earth, and finding our role in protecting it.
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