Welcome ... to the 21st Century

The opening decades of the 21^st Century crept onto the stage of history like the ocean waves lapping at the beaches on a summer evening.  Many of the footprints from previous eras were washed away.  At the same time new possibilities arose for all the inhabitants of Planet Earth.

This posting explores four ways that the uniqueness of the 21^st Century raises both possibilities and problems, simultaneously.  These include:  Globally Interconnected Societies, an Amplified Human Presence, living Beyond Spiritual Anchors and Ineffective Sociological Responses.

For the first time in human history, people of all cultures, backgrounds and social status can communicate – instantaneously – with one another.  In the 21^st Century, human beings live in Globally Interconnected Societies.  The development of the internet and the widespread availability of cell phones and wireless communication have produced a level of direct communication and rapid dissemination of information that has blanketed the Planet.  This interconnectivity affects the way businesses manage their operations and has provided heightened awareness and enhanced potential to individuals from urban centers to remote villages.

A second uniqueness of the 21^st Century involves the massive impact that the human species has, and can have, on all the systems and structures of the Planet itself.  This Amplified Human Presence has put the human species in the position of consciously, or unconsciously, affecting the future of the Planet itself.  Signs of this structural impact occur when construction crews cut off a mountainside to make way for a superhighway or when acid rains from distant coal-fired generating plants kill the trees in the mountain forests.  No other species, ever, has possessed this massive transformational power.

Stories of mysticism and redemption have helped people know the difference between right and wrong for centuries.  For example, the story of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes provided a compelling lesson about faith and giving what you have, that with faith it will be enough.  However, it’s difficult to take the story literally – the events described are scientifically impossible.  This highlights another unique feature of the 21^st Century – Moving Beyond Spiritual Anchors.  Over time, stories change; it’s not hard to imagine how a story about Jesus’ followers supporting one another in community can turn into a story about a miraculous transfiguration of food.  Many have faith in the miracle and believe the story; for others, however, it rings hollow.  Being rational about what probably happened between Jesus and his followers doesn’t mean we can’t benefit from the lesson… But what stories can we tell that don’t fall on deaf ears of people who immediately turn off because of the impossible nature of the story?  For people to whom the phrase “it was a miracle” returns a scoff, we still need something to anchor their decision-making.

Our methods of addressing problems in society are also based on outdated understandings.  In the first decade of the 21^st Century alone, phenomenal advances in technology and international relations changed the way people interact and, as noted above, the way humans impact the world.  This new landscape of the 21^st Century highlights the fourth point: Ineffective Sociological Responses.  For example, building suburbs in the United States to accommodate population growth worked well as a sociological framework for development in the 20^th Century.  In the 21^st Century, however, we understand more about the impact on the planet of automobile-centric suburbs and long commutes to work.  However, we haven’t adopted a new framework for population growth.  Our laws and social norms will change as our understandings and actions are altered toward thriving in the 21st Century.

On the 10th of each month, Emerging Ecology will release a new blog post to foster a conversation about ways these four unique characteristics of the 21st Century encourage individual and societal transformation toward reinventing the human at the species level.

Please join us in this conversation.

Nelson Stover and Tim Leisman

Toward a New Foundation

Where do people turn for guidance in the 21^st Century?  Open minded, deeply committed people working together have great opportunities for providing a new foundation for making decisions about taking creative action today.

Three main factors have changed the criteria for responsible action and provided additional possibilities for human interaction – a growing awareness of environmental degradation, the interconnectivity of people around the globe and the scale of the human presence on the planet.  From the streets of New Delhi, India to the costal shorelines of North Carolina, people are becoming increasingly aware that human actions are having long-lasting effects on the natural ecological systems.  Whether a person lives on a remote Nepalese hill-top or in a downtown high-rise apartment of a thriving metropolis, they more than likely have access to a cell phone and may well be in direct communication with friends and acquaintances anywhere, any time.  Finally, the seven billion people now living on Planet Earth have arrived at a place where their collective actions affect all the life systems of the Planet.

In a series of eleven sermons delivered to the congregation of the Unitarian Universalists in Covenant in Greensboro, North Carolina, Rev. F. Nelson Stover examines the real opportunities that are available to liberal religious congregations to make contributions to the enhancement of the quality of life for the larger community of which they are a part – to provide practical ways to develop mutually enhancing relationships between the human and the non-human realms.  Links to the sermons that are now available as YouTube videos can be found at www.EmergingEcology.org/FNS.  The final three sermons in this series will be given on Oct. 1, Nov. 5 and Dec. 3.

The perspectives shared in these sermons are based on the writings of Thomas Berry and have influenced the programs of Emerging Ecology, a non-profit organization promoting a worldview for the next generations’ solutions.  Emerging Ecology hosts a blog dedicated to exploring these themes.  People who are interested can join the discussion at http://tell-new-story.blogspot.com.

Worldview Salons

Some days it feels very much like our world is stuck; the ever-increasing complexity of social systems moving faster than the speed of our ability to understand them. While the advance of technology allows experts to sort through information faster than ever before, many individuals still feel lost in the information gap. Bestselling author David C. Korten shows in his book Change the Story, Change the Future that the fundamental problem stems from an inadequate cosmology, or, a story that describes where we came from, why we are here now, and guides us to where we should go in the future.

At Emerging Ecology, we agree with that premise, and have articulated a small but promising way to begin addressing the challenge of discerning a worldview for the next generations’ solutions. In Renaissance-era France, contemporary advances in art and philosophy were spread and exhibited in public gatherings called salons. Although eventually these fell into the hierarchy of what was deemed “acceptable”, we are inspired by the concept that progress can be made through public gatherings and discussions of social progress and obstacles. In fact, we believe it is absolutely necessary for a forward-moving cosmology to be constructed with complete transparency and input from many sources.

Thus far, we have hosted two of these Worldview Salons at the Kathleen Clay Edwards Library in Greensboro, North Carolina. Eager attendees at the first session contributed their ideas of how human actions are guided by their worldview, and the promise of how a new worldview can change actions. At the second session, we explored the idea of cosmology more deeply, sharing personal stories about mutually enhancing relationships that exist in the world, creating a sense of optimism that the challenges of complexity can be addressed.

Won’t you share your ideas with us?  

In memory of Bob Ouradnik, the Tell a New Story blog site is now being maintained and updated by Emerging Ecology.  Bob participated in some of the conversations that inspired the formation of Emerging Ecology.  Emerging Ecology will promote this blog site in its forthcoming newsletters.

The "God" Poem

[In the summer of 2002, Bob & Lou were taking part in a journaling retreat at Glen Agape, a retreat center owned by f(F)riend Bill Stevens. They were studying the journals of early Friend John Woolman that reported Woolman's experience of a diminishment of "self" and an increase in a oneness with God. Woolman was an early abolitionist and outspoken advocate of peace and justice. Bob wrote the following poem in about 15 minutes before breakfast the last day of the retreat.]

God

Deep in the cauldron of eternity
before time and space ever were,
You longed to know your own magnificence
to experience as more than dream or fantasy
your great power to create.
You longed for your unique being to be known
by sight and sound, by touch and taste and smell.

You, who were Consciousness and nothing else.
You blew yourself apart and birthed the cosmos.
You split yourself into night and day
and shaped yourself as planets, stars and galaxies.
As trees and shrubs, as robin and worm,
as wolves and whales, wheat and weeds, lake and desert.

You birthed yourself as Indian, African, Caucasian and Oriental
Infinite in shape and size, talent and temperment
You flowed forth as friend and neighbor,
as stranger, outsider, alien, unknown
Flowed forth as all who gather here this day ...
and gather there ... and there ... and there.

You became it all ... us all.
Each a reflection of divinity,
Holograms of holiness,
Sacred, reverenced, lovable.

And still ... the creating churns on, bubbling,  pressing upward
from the deeps of all that is unfolding, forming, fashioning,
from an infinite reserve.

You are Life
You are the restless tide. the ceaseless wind.
You are the universe ...  the sun ... the earth
all creatures - great and small
my family ... me.

Blessed be your name.

-- Bob Ouradnik

Once upon a time ...

There lived a man named Bob Ouradnik.  He had a dream about creating a blog space  -- this space that you are now viewing -- that would become an extension of the book he had written about spiritual journeys.  By the time the book was published, Bob felt that it already needed revising, but the revisions needed to be dynamic.  They needed to reflect the constantly changing personal landscape of understanding.  Due to events that he was unable to foresee, he did not live long enough to realize all of his dreams.

The other 2 posts (written in June 2011) are the only pieces of writing that Bob was able to add to the blog before his death on October 8, 2011.  They will give you a flavor of what he intended, although they were both still in "draft" form.

If you have reached this page in hopes of finding Bob's biography, please click the tab labeled "Bob's Biography," found above this post.

(This post was written by daughter, Jody Ouradnik.  Any comments left on the blog will be sent to her email address.)

And So the Stories Emerge ...

In an earlier post, "Spiritual But Not Religious," I explored the idea that religion is the story we create to communicate about the spiritual happenings in our personal lives.

As I defined it previously, spirituality is an awareness of  the "Beyond" in our personal lives.  Since that awareness can involve every sensory capacity of my being, it can not be reduced to just intellectual or emotional components.  It is impossible to completely express it to someone else.

The best we can do is to create a story ... a mythology.  For that we need metaphor and simile.  We need poetry, art, music, drama and such.  They become our best tools for communicating about breakthrough happenings in our personal lives.  Yet we must wait for our listener to respond, saying:  "Yeh, I had something like that happen to me!"  Only someone who has had a similar experience can sense the depth of what we are saying. 

While the "happenings" of life are final and complete,  our stories are not. They need constant updating,  recreated from our current, best understandings and delivered via best our means of expression. But these attempts at communication are temporal,  not eternal.  Game-changing experiences and new understandings keep breaking through, demanding attention.

This blog is about “game changing” events that are occurring in present time.  Contributors to this blog intend to explore events that demand a new story.  This post is about one that is unfolding right now.

Consider the following:

In the last fifty years, cosmology (the study of the universe in its totality) has made enormous progress in tracing the history of this universe back to its origin in a cosmic flaring of heat and light.  That occurred some 13.7 billion years ago.  Today’s cosmologists can determine with reasonable accuracy the state of this universe back to one nano-second after its birth!

The story emerging from this new information is that a previously non-existent mystery flared itself into existence as what at that moment became our time and space. 

The mystery had been “no thing.”   It was “no one.”   Yet, paradoxically, it was everything and everywhere.  As the voice from the burning bush is reported to have said to Moses:   "I am who I am",  or equally translated,  "I will be who I will be." 

It (and we cannot really call it an “it,” since it did not exist as a "thing") ... It chose (and again the human word "chose" is not appropriate but there is no other word) ... It chose to experience itself as a physical reality.  It flared forth out of its "no-thing-ness" and its "no-one-ness" to become photons of light blazing forth as a cauldron of heat.

Extreme heat over a span of 400,000 years of Earth time gave birth to helium and hydrogen atoms.  Every atom, every element that exists today, was forged out of that those initial photons of light.  Every aspect of every element that forms our current universe came out of that same Mystery.    Everything that today IS is connected, united, and whole in this common birth.

Some folk might choose to label the mystery that poured itself out in the Big Bang as “God."  If we join that human community then we need to remember that the word "God" is part of a human-created story designed to give temporal meaning to our daily experience it is reasonable to say that everything in the universe is made of “God-stuff.”  We are all -- everything is -- “God-stuff.”

The image of a supernatural being shaping clay that is separate and different from itself was a good one, once upon a time, but not the best in this current cosmological reality.  Perhaps “incarnation” can describe what happened 13.7 billion years ago when the Holy Mystery unfolded into the universe’s form.  Creator and creation are one and the same essence, different only in form.  The "flaring forth" was the first incarnation,  the first entry of a pre-existent beingness into time and space.   Perhaps it would be best to describe Jesus not as the first incarnation, but as one of the early human who had sensed who he really was ... and who we really are.

Because of the influx in those beginning seconds, it may be time to acknowledge that “I am God experiencing what it is to be human.”  “I am kin to every other creature, every tree, every mountain, planet, star and galaxy that now is.”  And, as this floods our consciousness, we become aware that we have work to do as co-creators of whatever is next to be.  For that we need the state of awareness of which a Hindu sage once spoke, saying that the goal of life is to realize “Tat twam asi.” (I am that too.)

All of that has ramifications for the old story’s concepts of the supernatural, the need for sacrificial atonement, and the nature of that mysterious Source.

Who can take us toward this new story?

Try Thomas Berry’s work.  He sees it in all nature.


Brian Swimme: He sees it in the cosmic dimensions of the universe.

Rupert Sheldrake: He sees it in formative fields of force that hold new forms together.

And many, many others too numerous to mention who have ventured outside the boxes of our past to pursue the Numinous wherever it is at work today.

They are reforming the story (religion), so that it may more accurately reflect the reality (Life), about which the story seeks to speak.

--
Bob Ouradnik
Greensboro, NC (June 2011)