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?  

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)