Welcome to the Ecozoic Era :-)
"Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow offer a new vision of reality, evolution, and the divine," writes Amy Hassinger in UU World. As evangelists of evolution they travel the country sharing 'the Great Story,' a religious perspective rooted in an evolving natural science.
"In this ministry, the first step is telling the Great Story. The next is to invite their listeners to find what Father Berry calls our Great Work. “It’s about thinking in new ways,” says the Rev. Erika Hewitt, minister at Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Goleta, California. “They’re inviting us to ask, ‘How do we understand our place in the universe?’” As Barlow puts it, “How do you act when you become a planetary force?”
"According to the Great Story, that’s what we are: a force that is polluting the planet and causing mass extinction, but at the same time is a unique and precious expression of Earth. We are Earth’s meaning makers, painters, self-discoverers, storytellers, and bards. We are Earth’s deep memory. If we can embrace that as our unique ecological role, if we can learn and celebrate our Great Story, if we truly can see ourselves as actual cells of our larger body, Earth, then caring for the environment will feel as urgent and as natural as caring for ourselves.
"If enough people come to think this way within the next fifty years, Dowd says, then we will begin to transform our current anthropocentric systems—of medicine, law, politics, government, and economics—into biocentric systems that honor all life. He finds evidence that the transformation has already begun: The fact that we have laws in place to protect endangered species is a sign that we are becoming conscious of our role as evolutionary agents. We are more interconnected as a species than we ever have been. We are learning to cooperate on a planetary scale. Scientists from all over the earth regularly and easily confer with each other. Our technology, most notably the Internet, allows us to exchange information, energy, and materials with others around the globe, crossing religious, ethnic, and social lines that previously divided us.
“The Ecozoic Era is a mythic mindset,” Dowd says. “It begins for each person when they choose to have the Ecozoic vision guide their actions in the world.” It is a utopian vision, but we can make it happen if we choose, Dowd and Barlow say. Will we? Only time—or evolution—will tell."
If you are interested in reading further, the entire article is attached.
Also, you can access discussion questions for this article at http://www.shiftinaction.com/node/3444. When you get there you will find the questions at the bottom of the long list of questions for other articles. Please be patient as you scroll down . . . you'll get there okay.
Have a healthful and joyful day!
Bob
