Event – New Scientist Live Weekend – Review
The New Scientist magazine ran their annual weekend of talks and stalls at ExCel London – a large exhibition space – in October 2024.
Festival – Buddhafield – Review
I’ve been to Buddhafield five times, and each time I’ve enjoyed it. If you are not a Buddhist (I’m not), don’t be put off by the title. The festival is more of a Buddhist/Pagan infusion, and it has a lot in common with green spirituality.
Virtual Reality – Life Chronicles – Review
This is a Virtual Reality experience taking you from the formation of the Earth 4.5 billion years ago through to today. In the experience, after seeing planet Earth formed, the story moves on to early life. Later there are primordial forests, dinosaurs and an early form of humans – a different branch than the one that led to homo sapiens.
Documentary – Teilhard: Visionary Scientist – Review
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1955) was born in the Auvergne region in France and became a Jesuit Priest. He was deeply committed to his spiritual journey and, throughout his life, he did not waver from his vision of a loving divine presence embedded in the world. However, his scientific work, particularly in palaeontology where he became an advocate for evolution, put him at odds with the dogma of the Catholic Church.
Music – Luminosity: Exploring the Wonder of the Universe and Our Place in it – Review
There was a standing ovation for Gary Albert’s performance of Luminosity, his musical composition. Gary is inspired by the writings of Brian Swimme – someone who has also inspired many in GreenSpirit.
Some thoughts on ‘Deep Time’ and Green Spirituality by Chris Holmes
The wonderful GreenSpirit Walking Break in late Spring of 2022 provided a happy coincidence for me. Our location at Monckton Wyld was very close to Dorset’s fascinating ‘Jurassic’ coast, and came just as I was reading the final chapter of ‘Otherlands’. In this superb book, the palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist Thomas Halliday takes the reader back to specific times and places over the past 550 million years of Earth’s history (the period of complex multi-cellular life and just one eighth of the total 4.6 billion). The Dorset coast, ‘Otherlands’ and walking in Nature with fellow GreenSpirits (plus mainly sunny weather) made me feel very open to all that ‘Deep Time’ offered, open to the astonishing journey that the Earth has been on. There is a real joy in knowing one is part of something so magnificent – but in what way is it ‘spiritual’? The following paragraphs will, hopefully, help to explain.
My Green Spiritual Journey #9 – ‘A Life of Two Halves’ by Mary Jo Radcliffe
I was born in London 10 days after war was declared into a very ancient traditional Catholic family. After 2 months my elder brother and I were sent with a very strict nanny, to a deaf Grandfather in Yorkshire. Obedience and fear were born. In January 1942 we came back to Stanmore to find another brother had arrived. Here bombs, air raids and gas masks accompanied by Catholic prayers were the pattern of a fear filled life though nothing was spoken of.
Music – Luminosity – Review
The performance of this piece of music in October 2021 in London was inspired by the book "The Universe is a Green Dragon" by Brian Swimme. Therefore, it’s all about the amazing unfolding of the universe from the big bang to the present day.
A Cosmic Walk Down Under
Catherine Hutchison writes about a workshop she attended on the Universe Story (the story as revealed by Science from the Big Bang to the present day) in Australia and why understanding the Universe Story is so important for our human evolution.
‘From our Feet to our Heart: The Cosmic Walk Adventure’ by Erna Colebrook
The concept of the Cosmic Walk was the brainchild of Sister Miriam MacGillis of Genesis Farm in New Jersey USA after she read The Universe Story by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry (1992) which has the beguiling subtitles of “From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era” and “A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos”.