Stardust and Sustainability

The Great Story of Science and Religion

Programs and Resources from Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd
Review by Pat Hoertdoerfer
Children, Family, and Intergenerational Programs Director, UUA
Boston, MA

Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd were presenters at the 2005 Meadville Lombard Winter Institute and have many programs and resources to offer professional religious leaders and congregational leaders in UU communities. They are self-described itinerant, evolutionary educators/storytellers who, over the past three years, have presented sermons, children’s stories, children’s special RE programs, and adult RE programs in many congregations in the United States and Canada. They have led their creative programs in liberal faith communities, campus ministries, college classrooms, and summer camps and conference centers.

Their approach starts with “The Great Story” by Thomas Berry (cultural historian and geologian – geologist and theologian) and Brian Swimme (physicist and cosmologist) and that story is the fourteen billion – year narrative of the cosmos, Earth, life, and humanity. It draws upon discoveries from the full range of sciences and becomes our collective sacred story, offering us an awareness of life that can nurture a just, healthy, beautiful, and sustainable life-affirming world for future generations of all species. “We humans did not come into this world: we grew out of it. We are not humans observing the Universe; we are the Universe awakening to its own grandeur, it’s own deep memory.” Their website (www.TheGreatStory.org ) is rich in resources for Unitarian Universalists of all ages. Curriculum ideas from their website for you to adapt for your program follow.

We Are Made of Stardust
Barlow wrote an aspect of this program for use in “Stories for All Ages” in UU church services, Sunday morning kid’s RE programs, and in specially scheduled 1½- to 2-hour programs for kids (usually concurrent with a program that Michael is doing for adults). No culture before our own has had a chance to bond with the night sky in this way, to see themselves as expressions of the cosmos, and to see that death is natural and generative. Kids also learn that recycling is vital to the freshness and continuation of life on Earth and to the whole of the heavens.

There are both children’s and adult versions of this program on the website. You can find the kids version at www.thegreatstory.org/stardust-kids.html .

Coming Home To North America
This is the sixty-five million – year (Cenozoic) story of the comings and goings of animals (mostly mammals) in North America. It is drawn from the acclaimed book by paleontologist Tim Flannery, The Eternal Frontier, and Connie’s book, The Ghosts of Evolution. The core teaching is that many animals that we think of as native to North America actually originated in another continent and then immigrated here (the cat family from Asia forty million years ago; ravens from Australia thirty-five million years ago; elephants from Africa seventeen million years ago; bison from Asia four hundred thousand years ago; and possums, porcupines, and armadillos from South America three million years ago. Flannery calls North America “The Land of Immigrants,” and human immigrants can learn to become native too – that means living sustainably with the land as home for many, many generations.

Because kids are fascinated with animals, this program easily allures them. And because Barlow invites them to bring in their stuffed animals for the ritual portion of the program, it builds another heart bond with the children. (This would be a good program to follow the ‘Honoring Our Mother Earth” program of Native American heritage that already is part if the UU kids’ curriculum, and it explicitly builds links to Native American stories.)

There are both adult and children’s versions of this program on the website. The kids’ version is at www.thegreatstory.org/children/NorthAmerica.html .

Evolutionary Parables
Jewish rabbis and Jesus conveyed values very effectively by using parables. The Navaho use stories about events that happened at particular geographic locations to teach values. We have a tremendous opportunity to use the same approach in teaching human-to-human and Earth/ecological values by creating playful “evolutionary parables” from our cosmic story.

There are about a dozen such parables up on the website, ranging from “The Lucky Little Seaweed” (about plant life moving onto land, written by paleontologist Mark McMenamin to “Pluto: The Adopted Planet” (which tells how Pluto came into the solar family after the other planets had formed). Both are playful, and adults often become a little teary over the latter. “Seaweed” teaches the value of cooperation. “Pluto” teaches that being a part of a family (solar or human) is not about how one became a family member but about whether the bonds of love/gravity are there.

Probably the best way to use these parables in children’s RE programs is to have middle schoolers rehearse and perform the script versions of the parables for the elementary-age kids, and then to progress on to writing their own! Any parables that take a significant evolutionary event in the fourteen billion year story and do a good job of telling it, imbued with important values, and using fun characters and a good plot, will go up on our website for everyone to use.

You can sample these evolutionary parables at www.thegreatstory.org/parables.html .

Great Story Beads
(Also called “cosmic rosaries.”) This is the fourteen billion – year epic of evolution told in beads. Barlow and Dowd have visited Montessori schools that have seen their website and gained the knowledge there to have elementary and middle school kids make their own Great Story beads from sculpey clay. We envision UU kids being offered simple, cheap, colored beads at an early age that they can use to represent the universe forming, the moon forming, oceans forming, first life, dinosaurs, flowers, and their own birth. Each year thereafter, the children can create new bead strings or add beads to old strings to signify anything new in the story they want to commemorate, plus any events that happened in their own life – bad or good – during the previous year.

The key is that they choose which events they wish to commemorate, they choose or make the beads, and their own personal story is on the same string as the universe story – as they are part of the universe too. The tangible aspects of this program are so alluring and feed into such a deep human response that we have been flabbergasted at how quickly kids learn (and love to learn!) the cosmic story by using beads.