Luminary: Jim Conlon

Luminary: Jim Conlon

Jim Conlon is Director of the Sophia Center, a wisdom school celebrating earth, art and spirit, at Holy Names University in Oakland, California. He has been engaged in community organization and development, depth psychology, journalism, popular education and graduate programs in theology and spirituality in Canada and the United States for many years. For more than two decades he has explored the cosmological vision of Thomas Berry and its implications for the Great Work to which each of us is called.

"Jim Conlon shows us how to bring the cosmological vision of Thomas Berry into a comprehensive program of transforming our world from the industrial growth paradigm to a mutually enhancing human/earth relations." -- Brian Swimme

Jim grew up on the shore of the St. Clair River whose waters provide the border between his native Canada and the United States. The youngest child of an Irish father and French Canadian mother, Jim attended the village school of his Southwestern Ontario home.

His early years were spent bathed in the beauty of the Great Lakes bio-region and responding to his love for baseball; both became in many ways classrooms for life’s important gifts and lessons.

Following attendance at a district high school eleven miles from his home, Jim received a degree in chemistry from Assumption University of Windsor and later in theology from the University of Western Ontario.

Deeply moved by the impact of the Vatican Council II, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and the therapeutic revolution, Jim moved from pastoral work to the streets. He felt propelled to follow his uncertain journey by listening to his heart. The years that followed brought him to Urban Training Centers in Toronto and Chicago, the Industrial Areas Foundation- Saul Alinsky Training Institute, the Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry, communication therapy, popular education, and now his contribution to the Great Work of humanity’s historical mission of cosmic wisdom found in the voices of those who cry for justice, healing and bread.

Today he pursues with “evolutionary faith” a passion for the wisdom that is revealed in the universe story, in the lives of his ancestors, and his own tradition.

As a teacher and administrator, author and presenter, he strives to give voice to the cry of a people who find meaning in the narrative of their lives, in the promise of geo-justice, in the cosmic melodies that resonate among us, in the deep ponderings that take us to the precipice of new beginnings, and in the unspoken hunger that finds expression in the sacred impulses of our lives.

As Jim’s life continues to unfold, he has reached a point where he now wishes to invite you to join him on the journey and, through his talks and presentations, to invite you to discover what you plan to do with your “one wild and precious life.”

He is the author of several books, including From the Stars to the Street: Engaged Wisdom for a Brokenhearted World; At the Edge of Our Longing: The Sacred Impulse; Ponderings from the Precipice; Sacred Story and Geo-justice.

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