The new story is a cosmological story of creation, told through our telescopes and microscopes, and articulated by our ever-increasing understanding of how evolution has led us along this 14-billion-year journey. It is therefore also the story of our place in the universe, and it entails nothing less than a radical transformation of human self-understanding. The key narrator of this new story emerged in the 1970s in the form of eco-theologian Thomas Berry (1914–2009), who first presented his vision in his seminal text The New Story (1978). Dominican Sister Miriam Theresa MacGillis, director of the Genesis Farm ecological center in Blairstown, New Jersey, is one of the primary interpreters of this story. Genesis Farm, founded with the support of the Dominican Congregation in 1980, is dedicated to promoting an understanding of the universe and the Earth as a single, evolving process. MacGillis, who, according to Berry, designed the first ever script for the ritual in the mid-1980s Space walks, through its seminars, lectures and workshops, seeks to help people understand and experience this new scientifically based cosmological knowledge, which brings profound insights into our public, personal and spiritual lives and inspire through it a comprehensive approach to personal and social change. Leading today's man to a radically new understanding of what it means to be a human being in the 21st century. This interview by Alan AtKisson with Miriam Theresa MacGillis was originally published in the American Quarterly Context (No. 24, 1990) under the title "Living The New Story". It was published in Czech under the title "Living a new story" in the review Space 86 (Summer 2010, pp. 67-76, translated by Milan Jára). This is a revised translation of the aforementioned Czech translation of the aforementioned interview by Jiří Zemánek (2019).
Alan: What is the core of the “new story”?
Miriam: Based on our scientific research, we now have the prerequisites to understand the beginning of the universe and the process of its formation, and with it the solar system, planet Earth, all life, and also man. For the first time ever, all peoples on Earth have the opportunity to understand this story of the origin of things, and this puts each of them - their history, their significance, and their role in this process - in a completely new light.
The most important part of this scientific story is the fact that the universe originated not only in its physical, but also in its inner, psychological, spiritual dimension. It is about integrated evolutionary process. When we think about it, we can begin to understand our place in this process - what it is to be the being in which the Earth has reached self-reflective consciousnessThis changes all our definitions of ourselves and our nature.
Every schoolchild who is familiar with the findings of modern science and the study of the Earth has this information at his disposal. If we can understand that our lives and our human history are as much a part of the evolution of the universe as the natural world, then we can also realize that all nations, all cultures and religious traditions, including a wide range of diverse ethnicities, have also been part of this process and have therefore played a significant role in it. The Earth desperately needs the complete summation of all this wisdom in order to advance to the next stage of her evolution.
Alan: We are now in the process of telling ourselves this new story and introducing it to our children. How can we manifest it in our lives?
Miriam: I believe that at every level of our humanity, within the entire inner psychic structure from which we derive our consciousness of personality and individuality. Today we are beginning to realize that this I is an expression of the deeper self of the Earth, and even the deeper self of the Universe itself – that there are no dividing boundaries. This whole is my whole self. Psychologically, then, the consciousness of unity – actually unity – with the inner dimension of the universe becomes an incredibly beautiful and alluring mystery on the threshold of which we find ourselves. And when it comes to our emotional life, feelings of connection, connectedness with the whole or unity cease to be mere idealistic ideas of the poetic spirit. They are empirically substantiated, because we know that with each of our genes we are connected to the whole. From a physical point of view, it is the same. If we begin to identify with the entire physical being of the planet, then we can understand that it is necessary to improve and preserve the integrity of the entire natural world – because it is the functioning of this part of the planet that allows humans to exist at all. Without air, water, soil and plants, there is no human life. This means that the Earth is literally our body.
Alan: Doesn't experiencing this new story amount to a complete revolution in religious life?
Miriam: It's more about transformation, because in a revolution, only one party changes places with another party. Transformation moves everyone forward.
Alan: What is the relationship between transformation and history? What part of the past continues to accompany us?
Miriam: I believe we carry with us whole The past. We don't cut ourselves off from it as if it were something bad and we would therefore have to make a huge correction to separate ourselves from it. It is only because of the past that we have come to this kind of knowledge.
The main shift we are making now concerns our conception of space and time. In old cosmological systems, time was understood as cyclical and the universe was unchanging and static. But in this new context, the universe is a constantly emerging process. Time itself is development. So everything in the past was necessary to open up possibilities for what was yet to develop – just as the tree is contained within the acorn. The acorn must go through all the stages of the process by which a tree is born, the form of which, however, is very different from the acorn. However, we cannot have one without the other.
Alan: This brings us to some interesting questions about people's relationship to their traditions. How will this development affect Catholics and Buddhists and believers of other faiths?
Miriam: I believe it will deepen and revitalize their connection to their own tradition. I realize that I am now much more deeply connected to my own tradition than ever before. The difference is that the meanings have changed. inside meanings. In other words, forms that carried meanings in the past have now opened up to much deeper meanings – that is, the forms have to adapt and change. I believe that these deeper meanings can be derived within existing forms if the priests or clergy who lead the liturgical ceremony have the vision. But if they don’t, they will continue to interpret these forms in the old way – and then that can be problematic.
Alan: If they don't have vision, how can they get it?
Miriam: It is contained in the power of a new cosmology and a new story, and it comes to us from all different directions. On the one hand, it is told by a theologian like Thomas Berry, and on the other, by a scientist like James Lovelock.
Thomas Berry interprets this vision in the broadest terms, in a way that is very accessible to people in both religious and scientific communities. He says that if we continue to tell our religious stories without taking into account new scientific knowledge, then we trivialize religious tradition. And similarly, if the scientific community continues to tell the story of the universe only in material terms—without that inner/psychic/spiritual dimension—then we trivialize science. Neither of these perspectives, by themselves, can awaken a vision for our children and their hope for the future.
So the story is available to us. We can access it in many, many ways. The challenge for all of us is how we can bring it into our lives - into our workplaces, into our homes, into our music, into our offices, into our agricultural systems, into our economies. The story requires this kind of transmission.
Alan: What elements of continuity exist here, for example, with older understandings of the Christian tradition?
Miriam: In the Jewish tradition, there is the event of the Exodus. It was a historical event and it means what it means. For the Jewish people, with their ongoing path of salvation and their vision of history, it was a true experience. But Christians look back on this event and say that foreshadowed the great exodus that Christ underwent through his life, through death and resurrection – so that without the first exodus there would actually be no Christ. The Exodus contains the possibility of the mystery of Christ’s passion – that is, both events are connected.
And today we sense that the form of the mystery of Christ's Passion was also a prefiguration of the transition that our human race must go through - a prefiguration of the process of life, death and resurrection that is absolutely necessary for us to be willing to die to our fears, our ignorance, our prejudices, our sense of exclusivity and the idea that we know the whole truth. And there is no liberation, no possibility of inner transformation, unless we realize that this is a continuous process, a daily event.
Alan: That chalice cannot be avoided.
Miriam: Exactly. It is appropriate to use words from the Bible here to die to one's self, to die to outmoded ideas or illusions about oneself, to recover that deep divine essence, hidden in the Christ event, which itself was hidden in the Exodus event. It is all one whole. We are connected to the divine. We carry this incredible mystery with us. That is the light that is carried through the whole process.
Alan: Thomas Berry, in his essay “The Dream of the Earth,” writes that in this time of crisis, we must ask for guidance from our genetic code, from the Earth itself, and from the universe. How do we ask for this guidance?
Miriam: By awakening our inner consciousness. Every atom of every cell in our bodies – every single strand of DNA – carries the entire psychic memory of the universe. And we can open our way to it through inner forms of consciousness – through dream, myth, symbol, prayer, meditation, or other altered states of consciousness. That's the source.where we can discover the energy, insight, and mental strength to break free from our current state of addiction.
Berry also says that if we continue to educate and communicate in the current cultural code—which is a rehash of the old illusion that we are separate from the Earth, that the Earth is a vast material backdrop and storehouse, intended only for us to use and reshape without any residue—then we are just wasting enormous resources teaching our children to self-destruct. That internal process is therefore very important here.
But Thomas also says that the key thing about getting in touch with this inner psychic place of spirit is learning the skills and tools to function appropriately in the natural world. Our scientific knowledge has had disastrous consequences for the natural world, and our Western spirituality has transcended the natural world—so we we don't know, how we should behave in it. Thomas Berry says that we are actually in a state of autism. That is a real challenge for our schools, for educational centers and for parenting: how do we develop these skills? Right now we are pretty illiterate in this regard.
Alan: Some people are responding to this situation by creating new – or reviving old – rituals and shamanic ways in an attempt to reconnect with the earth and other life on the planet. How do you see these efforts? How do they relate to more traditional faith communities?
Miriam: The shaman enters the inner world and brings forth strength and healing – and that is the potential that all humans have. It is an integral part of our humanity to be able to enter the world of spirit and become a blessing to life. In the past, this was seen exclusively as a role reserved for a special caste or a specific type of personality or an exceptional chosen individual from a community. But I believe that every fully developed human being has access to this potential.
However, even in the past, when the shaman entered the inner life of the natural world, he did so in a somewhat limited form. It was an animistic world, and therefore the power was the power of the natural world. Later, the shaman entered the world of the goddess, and then he became a priest who entered the world of transcendent deities. But today, we cannot focus on one and exclude the others. One of my concerns about the return to shamanism in the natural world is that it can make man the enemy. The understanding of transcendence then becomes completely flawed, because what we have to do is include in this process all.
In other words, it is a process recovery, healing. God the Father and God the Mother and the animal spirits are all images of divinity – but none of these images exhaust the possibilities of divinity. The danger arises when we take only one of them and exclude all the others. Today's shaman must be fully in tune with total and to restore the consciousness of divinity as it has manifested in all the images of the entire story of Earth. Nothing we cannot exclude.
Alan: Don't you notice that the shaman, wherever he comes from, is regaining a place within existing faith communities?
Miriam: I believe that the entire community of faith must understand that every person is a shaman. We need to stop waiting for one special person to do it for us.
Alan: What approach do you take when trying to teach people this new way of thinking and living? How do you help them internalize it, how can they express it and embrace it in their lives on more than just an intellectual level?
Miriam: First of all, I don't teach it because I learn it myself. In the seminars, people are invited to participate in the learning process. I contribute to it myself by telling a story that makes it easy for people to understand this new way of thinking and living, and then I invite them - whatever tradition they come from - to reflect on its precious uniqueness for themselves. The uniqueness of understanding that each tradition brings with it is absolutely crucial to the unfolding of the universe and to the acquisition of the wisdom we need to reach. The diversity of traditions is as important as the diversity in the forest.
Therefore, it may be unwise to cut yourself off from your own tradition just because you have discovered new knowledge or new ways of looking at things. Because you you are this tradition. For example, Judaism does not exist in some abstract form. Judaism is simply Jews. And a Jew is a person who has a deep sense of connection with the divine as present in history, which always evokes deeper levels of human potential. So why cut yourself off from that?
Alan: Do you use any ceremonies or rituals in your workshops to help people feel the new story more deeply?
Miriam: I like to do rituals with the four elements: fire, air, earth, and water – because they are the foundation of all sacred systems, the fabric of existence.
However, one of the rituals I like to end a workshop with is an evolutionary walk. We will take much a long piece of rope and we unroll it in a huge spiral in the room. The rope represents the time frame of the universe, which is 14 billion years. Then we measure the major events that have occurred in the evolution of the universe on the rope - the formation of the solar system, the emergence of the biosphere, the emergence of single-celled organisms, all the way to the entire evolution of man, and then a very, very short period of human history - and finally we mark these significant events with candlelight. People then go through this process they pass through and tries to experience it with his whole being.
At the beginning of the spiral there is a candle that represents the divinity, the creator. People light their candles from it and then walk through this spiral. It is a very moving experience to observe how long the beginnings are, preceding the emergence of life, and on the other hand how short a time ago life arose and how fast its entire development was. Human life is at the very end of the spiral and when people leave it, they call out their names: “The universe has become Mary!” “The universe has become Jacob!”
Alan: Aren't these rituals at all contrary to your Catholic tradition?
Miriam: No, because they do not represent formal liturgical acts. In the Christian tradition, creativity in other dimensions of prayer and ritual. But it has always been possible to explore these dimensions, which is what families and religious communities have traditionally done. Performing a ritual that connects us to the natural world is just another variation on the same thing.
Alan: What other things can people do in their own lives to solidify this awareness of the sacredness of the Earth and to begin to – that word again – embody this understanding?
Miriam: Our spirituality must be as practical as possible. We must begin right where we live – in our house, in our backyard, in our immediate surroundings, in our region. If there are these things sick or if what we do in our household contributes to illness, then our spirituality is not effective.
If we can remember this when we sit around the table, before we go to sleep, during our prayers together, or in our moments of giving, then we can enter into these deeper aspects of life. We just have to turn away from the television and start doing these things in our homes.
We also need to open our kitchen cabinets and look at the labels on our food packages and see what we are putting into our bodies and what we are dumping into our waste. I think this is also closely related to the kind of clothes we wear; and how we perceive the recycling practices in our immediate environment.
And we also need to be an active voice at the policy-making level. We need to know our municipal politicians, find out who sits on the planning commission, become familiar with development and spatial planning policies.
Alan: And all this is an integral part of our spirituality?
Miriam: Yes, absolutely! We have been blatantly passive in terms of our participation in these decisions, basically because we are rushing forward like crazy and working just to survive – or to achieve what we think we absolutely need to survive.
Alan: Many people are simply afraid when even a small fraction of real meaning enters their lives. We are terrified of what we will uncover if we dig a little deeper. What can we do to be more comfortable with the depth of feelings that arise within us when we begin to address these issues?
Miriam: I think love is the only way we can empower each other. We hold on to what makes us feel safe—the way we have defined ourselves, the images we have created of ourselves or that others have created of us. To let go of any of that is very painful and very scary for us, especially when we have lived for so long in this culture, dominated by the idea that the value of our being depends on our material wealth or our achievements. But who cares? I mean that literally – whom Does it really matter?
Alan: Each of us believes that other people care.
Miriam: Exactly. We have been culturally programmed to believe that in our true I we represent no real value.
And so we have to be compassionate and understanding of the fact that for people who have fought to so-called "break through," it can be pretty scary to hear, "You know, actually... you don't have to "You don't have to prove anything to anyone. Who are you under all this?"
We are talking about deeper things that affect us strongly and that call us together. And I don't think anything can help in this process other than love and understanding acceptance, tolerance, understanding and support. We must to be loving and not judgmental.
Alan: We must avoid making enemies of people who are less aware of these things.
Miriam: That's the crucial thing – no enemy does not exist. We all know what it means to live in an illusion. We all know what it is to be scared or feel threatened. And we all know how we behave when we are in that state.
Alan: Do you see any movement or emerging foundation today for strengthening community among people of different faiths?
Miriam: Yes, absolutely. We need to stick together because our entire economic system is based on the exploitation of the Earth. Once we truly realize that the Earth can't take it anymore, we will be ready to make some challenging and difficult adjustments to our way of life. We need to be able to reach out and support each other and rethink our understanding of private wealth.
Alan: Do you think we can make the kind of changes you describe?
Miriam: It is absolutely essential to to hand over this hope – although not necessarily optimistic or rosy – and not expecting to see the results of our actions soon. The change we are talking about must come from our inner freedom, from our own sense of what is true and right, and from our love for the future – from our love for life. We are so programmed for quick results that we can get discouraged and give up. People need to realize that no change is so small that it doesn’t matter. These things simply take time – when one thing builds on another and a small action becomes a platform for something else to happen. So hope is an act of will. It is a conscious decision to do something that sometimes seems to make no sense.
Alan: This is very similar to faith.
Miriam: Yes. Yes.
thanks for this article!!!