This ritual was created in the mid-1980s by Dominican Sister Miriam Theresa MacGillis of Genesis Farm in Blairstown, New Jersey, inspired by the “New Story” as told by eco-theologian and cosmologist Thomas Berry (1914-2009). The ritual is designed to offer participants an experience of the grandeur of cosmic time and space and cosmic creativity. The “Cosmic Walk” takes us through the sequence of the “story of the universe,” including the process of Earth’s development and the brief history of humanity; it expresses the uniqueness of each life event, the uniqueness of each manifestation of the cosmic story in the development of the whole in which each of us participates.
Much of the text of this story is taken from the prologue to the book by Brian Swimm and Thomas Berry The Universem Story: From Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era (New York, HarperCollins 1992). The events that have been chosen as stops on this walk are somewhat random. You can choose other events that you want to pick up. A timeline of the history of the universe and Earth can be found in many sources. In addition to the book mentioned The Universe Story also in the book A Walk Through Time by Sydney Liebes, Elizabeth Sahtouris and Brian Swimm (1998) or in the book What is Life? by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan (1995).
"The space walk developed by a Dominican sister Miriam Theresa MacGillis from the Genesis farm is a symbolic reconstruction that helps us enter the story of the universe experientially. The participants in the ritual walk along a long rope laid out in a spiral shape, which represents the entire story of the universe, including the story of the Earth, and its gradual development and differentiation from the beginning to the present. At first, it seems like a walk along a timeline, because the main events in the history of the universe and the Earth are marked on the rope with small candles at appropriate distances. For example, the beginning of life on Earth is marked as the first flight of a bird. In reality, however, it is much more than a timeline, because we do not observe the flow of events as an objective observer looking at it from the outside, but we enter into the development of our own being and connect with it and thus with the entire Earth and the ecosystems of which we are a part. By walking along a very long symbolic path and lighting candles to highlight certain events, we are trying to unite with our history. After all, our present world represents a new structuring of the same substance that previously represented a long succession of other beings and relationships in that Eternal Now. The walk allows us to celebrate the noble creatures of the Earth, both old and new, to identify with the Earth, and to understand the depth of our interdependence and our communion with her and other beings, as we have participated together in her development from the very beginning. Have we realized how overwhelming it is to be a self-aware, conscious being, a contemporary form that has become the Universe and the Earth? Do we already know what remarkable creatures our brothers and sisters, animals and plants, are, each with their own unique sensitivities and perceptions? In this time of great need, the space walk helps us develop a transformed consciousness that allows us to connect with largely, which is giving rise to what Thomas Berry aptly called the Ecozoic Era.”
Mary Conrow Coelho, author of the book Awakening Universe, Emerging Personhood / The Power of Contemplation in an Evolving Universe (2001)
PROLOGUE
We want to know: What came first? What was the beginning? The event before all other events? The time before all other times? We don't know. Maybe we can't know it. And yet we have named it: Dream, Mystery, quantum vacuum, God...
1
13.7 billion years ago, from that place that was no-place, from that time that was no-time, the cosmos burst into existence in a silent glow of unimaginable brilliance. All the energy that had ever existed in the entire span of time exploded from a single point smaller than a grain of sand. An unimaginably vast number of elementary particles, light, and space-time itself unfolded and expanded from this quantum vacuum, this primordial unity. If stars shine in the future and lizards squint in their light, these processes will be made possible by the same numinous energy that erupted at the dawn of time.
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300,000 years later—the universe, densely packed with energy, swelled and rose in all directions; as a result, the elementary particles cooled and stabilized, allowing the first atomic entities of hydrogen and helium to form. These elementary atoms represented new connections, made possible by the cosmic forces of attraction, drawing simple particles into connected relationships. Not inert or dead or passive, each atom thundered with its own peculiar activity.
3
One billion years of uninterrupted night allowed the universe to prepare for its next macroscopic metamorphosis. Within the depths of its silence, the universe shook with the immense creativity necessary to create galaxies—including our Milky Way—more than hundreds of billions of galaxies in all.
These gigantic structures swirled through the void of space, gathering all the hydrogen and helium into self-organizing systems and clusters of systems and groups of clusters of systems. Each galaxy presented its unique form to the universe. Each gave birth to billions upon billions of primordial stars. The most luminous stars hastily went through the natural sequence of their transformations and exploded as colossal supernovae, equaling a billion stars in their luminosity and spewing their stellar material throughout the galaxy. From the material that was created in the nuclear furnaces of these primordial stars, new stars, the stars of the second generation, formed. These stars were richer in complexity and in possibilities, since the primordial stars created the elementary entities of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hundreds of other elements.
4
5 billion years ago, in our spiral galaxy, our grandmother star, the mother of our Sun, Tiamat, was born, which was huge compared to the Sun. She concocted miracles in her fiery belly and then sacrificed herself in a supernova explosion. New elemental forces were scattered in all directions, so that the cosmic adventure could deepen.
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4.6 billion years ago, our Milky Way galaxy shook the peacefully drifting cloud of the star Tiamat's remnants and gave birth to tens of thousands of new stars, including our own star, the Sun. As soon as the Sun came into existence, it displayed its own self-organizing abilities.
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Four and a half billion years ago, the Sun ejected most of the clouds of elements that still float around it, while it spun the rest into a multi-banded disk of matter that formed the connected solar planetary system. The explosive early planets, bombarded by comets and meteors, boiled away as molten and gaseous materials. Each of them created its own story through its geological evolution. One of them, Earth, formed in a way that was uniquely suited to the development of continuous creativity, due to its position in the solar system and the precise balance of its own internal dynamics.
7
Over the next half billion years, as the Earth's surface settled and cooled, an atmosphere began to form above it. The first rains fell on Earth, oceans formed, and a process of constant exchange of water between the oceans and the atmosphere developed. Massive earthquakes in the Earth's crust formed mountain ranges, and erosion brought rich minerals into the sea. These minerals, together with other minerals that were formed by volcanic activity in the depths of the sea, created a creative chemical womb and the conditions for a new and radically different stage in the development of the universe.
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3.9 billion years ago, this vibrant fertile womb gave birth to the first living cells. These primordial beings had the ability to organize themselves as stars and galaxies did, but they also had astonishing new abilities. They could remember essential information, including the patterns necessary to connect new living cells.
9
Over the next 200 million years, cells developed a new order of creativity, as they learned to capture the packets of energy that the Sun spewed to Earth at the speed of light, and used these luminous quanta as food – thus inventing the process of photosynthesis.
By harvesting hydrogen from the oceans, these sun-fed cells released vast quantities of oxygen into the Earth system, which then slowly saturated the land, atmosphere, and seas over hundreds of thousands of years. Over two billion years, the sun-powered cells unwittingly pushed the Earth system beyond its capacity to withstand such conditions. As a result, the vast majority of early cellular communities perished as their individual cells were ignited from within by oxygen. Yet out of this crisis, which threatened the very viability of a living planet, emerged new and radically advanced beings.
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Two billion years ago, the first cells with nuclei emerged through the fusion of separate and distinct living entities. These new, more complex beings had the ability not only to tolerate oxygen, but also to harness its dangerous energy for their own purposes. Therefore, they literally bubbled with creativity.
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1 billion years ago, thanks to life's continued propensity for union, these cells learned to reproduce sexually, vastly increasing the creative potential for new life.
12
600 million years ago, single-celled creatures took the bold step of immersing themselves in a larger mind by joining together in their trillions to form the first multicellular being. Early animal life flourished on Earth, with corals, worms and spiders, snails, clams and insects emerging. Eyes appeared, and Earth saw for the first time.
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510 million years ago, the first fish moved in the oceans using their adipose fins, developing a spine to protect the first terrestrial nervous system.
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460 million years ago, the waves of the sea washed seaweed onto the shore. Unable to crawl back home to the sea, the algae, along with the insects that soon joined them, adapted to life on land and revived the long barren continents.
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425 million years ago, plants developed woody cells and learned to stand upright; they first lived along the coasts of oceans and rivers, and then transformed into trees that were capable of covering entire continents with life.
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395 million years ago, insects, which were able to cool themselves by radiating heat from their bodies, unexpectedly took flight, becoming the first creatures to populate the skies.
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370 million years ago, fish followed plants and insects in their migration to land, and soon the continents were teeming with amphibians and reptiles.
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235 million years ago, dinosaurs spread across the Earth in all their wonderful variety of forms, sizes, and lifestyles. Some of them, reaching into the sunlit skies, reached a height unmatched by any other terrestrial creature.
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215 million years ago, mammals emerged from the reptile group, bringing emotional sensitivity to the terrestrial community of life; they developed within their nervous systems a new capacity for sensing the universe. Their advanced parental care for their own offspring has resulted in our deep concern today for future generations of all species.
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150 million years ago, birds emerged from the dinosaur group and followed insects into the vast expanse of the sky.
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120 million years ago, flowers appeared in a multitude of colors and forms, inviting celestial creatures, their partners, to unceasing creativity – to a new dance.
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65 million years ago, an astronomical collision changed Earth's atmosphere and climate in such a way that nearly all forms of animal life had to adapt or become extinct. Many animals followed the dinosaurs in the mass extinction process. But the destruction also opened up new possibilities, which were seized upon by birds, mammals, and other creatures that expanded in the wake of the disaster.
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20 million years ago, the Earth's crust, in its perpetually restless creativity, gave birth to new mountain ranges: the Sierra Nevada, the Himalayas, and the Alps.
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4 million years ago, our early ancestors stood on two legs and emerged from their forest home to explore the African plains.
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3 million years ago, the Earth entered a cycle of transformational change with the advent of the last ice age.
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2 million years ago, early humans used their hands to shape earth materials into tools, opening another door to endless possibilities for creativity.
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Half a million years later, humans began to control fire and harness the sun's energy to support their own plans.
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50,000 years ago, in the process of life's development, Homo sapiens emerged. Through man, the universe realizes its potential for conscious self-awareness.
29
35,000 years ago, humans migrated across the Bering Isthmus and down North and South America. As if they could no longer contain their wonder at existence, they began to develop a new level of celebration, captured in numerous cave paintings; it was associated with the creation of music and with festivals that took the form of ceremonies around the death of friends and the changing of the seasons. In their artistic depictions of animals in cave paintings found deep within the earth, humans expressed something of the beauty that gripped the depths of their hearts and minds.
30
10,000 years ago, humans began to consciously shape the activities and patterns of nature through the domestication of plants and animals. The provision of food supplies allowed population levels to rise sharply. Small villages and pottery workshops sprang up across the planet, weaving and architecture developed, and calendars appeared that depicted cosmic rhythms. Rituals and shrines to the Great Mother deity replaced the worship of totemic animals.
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5,000 years ago, urban civilizations developed with growing populations, and a military system emerged to protect concentrated power and wealth.
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3,500 years ago, classical religions began to emerge; first, religions based on the teachings of Moses, and later, other religions based on the teachings of Buddha, Laozi, and Confucius. The Mayan civilization flourished. A little later, the life and teachings of Jesus and the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad led to the emergence of Christianity and Islam.
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300 years ago, Western natural-science philosophers began a three-century-long leap into matter; a heroic quest to empirically discover the nature of the cosmos—from the motions of the planets and the age of the Earth to the innermost workings of living creatures.
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104 years ago, Einstein's equations of general relativity revealed the possibility that the universe is not a static place, but rather an ever-expanding entity that originated at some distant moment in time and will one day die. Soon after, Hubble's observations of distant galaxies confirmed that the universe is indeed expanding.
35
57 years ago, Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring Silent Spring marked the beginning of the environmental movement and the dawn of the realization that we humans, with our vastly expanding population and our enormous demands on the Earth's body, are claiming so much space for ourselves in the terrestrial community of life that our relatives in all other genera and families of life are disappearing at a faster rate than at any time since the Earth's collision with an asteroid 65 million years ago.
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Fifty-four years ago, scientists Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias heard echoes of the birth of the universe through instruments sensitive enough to detect radiation still spreading through the universe from its initial radiation fourteen billion years ago.
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Fifty years ago, humans first set foot on the Moon and witnessed the Earth rise above its horizon, while the Earth became complex enough to bear witness to its own integral beauty for the first time.
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Today we discover the meaningful story of the universe and celebrate the sacredness of the entire Earth and the entire human community. Today we explore the role of human consciousness in our ongoing evolution and in the evolution of the universe. Today we rejoice in the beauty of the Earth, born from the span of almost fourteen billion years of time. And the greatest gift to us is that the dream of the Earth, in fact the dream of the universe, continues to unfold, and we rejoice to be a part of this evolution.
Selected and translated by: Jiří Zemánek
This is a translation of the original script "The Cosmic Walk" by Miriam Therese MacGillis from the mid-1980s - see https://www.scribd.com/document/163105716/Cosmic-Walk. Some of its passages (for example, points 4, 6, and 12) have been supplemented with reference to the prologue of Brian Swimm and Thomas Berry's book The Universe Story (1992). The opening motto by Mary Conrow Coelho (from the author's book Awakening Universe, Emerging Personhood / The Power of Contemplation in an Evolving Universe, Wyndham Hall Press, 2001) is taken from the website http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/cosmic.htm.