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PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

COURSES

Universe Story

Integrated Curriculum

OPTIONS

Group Rates

For Credit

Our cosmology consists of three central pillars: the nature, origin, and meaning of the world we experience. Said another way: what is, what was, and what matters. Our understanding of the nature and origin of our world has changed dramatically in the last few centuries. Yet our meaning has, by and large, remained little changed. This course, then, is about considering a new meaning for the world of our experience, thereby completing the third pillar required for a new cosmology.

Specifically, this course concerns how we have structured and hopefully will restructure our human activities in light of our new understandings of the intimacy of the Earth process, an intimacy out of which we emerged and flourished.

Over the past several thousand years we have invented systems of agriculture, economics, education, religion, spirituality, work, social interactions, etc., all within an understanding of the Earth as derivative to our human activities. As a result we humans are now a threat to the survival of Earth's life community. What is now called for is a reinvention of our human cultural activities based on our new knowledge of the nature of Earth and the evolutionary process.

The general structure of the course is as described in the Program Description page. Those aspects which distinguish this course from other courses in this program follow:

Educational Environment

Each participant will receive a resource kit containing several CDs or DVDs with the course content consisting of textual, visual, and audio supporting materials, links to relevant websites, assignments in supplemental texts (listed below), and short writings by faculty. To give you an idea of the course material here are audio recordings of two of the many videos included in the resource kit. The first is of Miriam MacGillis speaking on the subject of agriculture. The second is of Larry Edwards speaking on the subject of the power of story. [These may take a couple of minutes to download if you are on a telephone connection to the web. If you fail to hear these talks, you may need to download and install the RealMedia player. Click here for directions for doing this.]

In addition to the videos included in the resource kit the video series by Miriam, Exploring a New Cosmology, will be used. It is available from Genesis Farm. See below for details.

Specific Subject Matter

The twenty seven weeks are divided into nine three-week modules: the Universe Story; Ecological Design; The Web of Life; Health & Healing; Agriculture; Economics; Governance; Integral Education; and Deep Wisdom.

Texts and Videos

The following texts and videos will be involved in the course.

Christopher Uhl, Developing Ecological Consciousness, Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.

Thomas Berry, Dream of the Earth, Sierra Club Books,1990.

Thomas Berry, The Great Work, Harmony/Bell Tower, 2000.

Primary Faculty

Miriam MacGillis, M. A. lives and works at Genesis Farm, which she co-founded in 1980 in Blairstown, New Jersey. An Earth activist, artist, and Dominican Sister, Miriam lectures internationally on the New Cosmology and the writings of Thomas Berry. She has created widely-distributed audio and video tapes, including “Fate of the Earth” and “Exploring a New Cosmology.”

Larry Edwards received a Ph.D. in chemical-physics from Harvard University. He has been on the faculties of the American University of Beirut, the California State University of Northridge, the California Institute of Technology, and was a research associate at the Jacques Cousteau Oceanographic Museum in Monaco. Larry worked 17 years at the U.S. National Science Foundation in Washington D.C. He is currently on the faculty of the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, Wisdom University in Oakland, CA, and Genesis Farm in Blairstown, NJ.