Book Review of Journey of the Universe

Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker: Journey of the Universe
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011
Review by Julianne Lutz Warren
Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 2:1 (2012): 106-109
http://www.springerlink.com/content/k38115284124q33p/

Perhaps you have felt it, too. Consider the consequences of Enlightenment philosopher René Descartes’s well-known formulation—not God, but “man as ‘master and proprietor of nature,’” as Czech author Milan Kundera puts it (2003, p. 41). We realize now that human progress under such human oversight has surprised us. In spite of discovering “miracles” of science and technology along the way, our path has not brought us into the better world we thought we wanted. It has conveyed us rather into the shadowlands of our Imperial dreams. Nature is vanishing from the planet.

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We can do it! Protecting the Earth in troubled times

By Erin Jarvis
Berkeley Science Review
March 9, 2012
http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/we-can-do-it-protecting-the-earth-in-troubled-times/

"We are the stars burst into consciousness." This is my favorite bit of wisdom from evolutionary philosopher Brian Thomas Swimme. His words are not simply metaphor; we truly are made of the stars. While stars are initially composed of just hydrogen and its fusion product helium, at the end of the star’s life carbon, oxygen, and all the rest of the elements are rapidly formed before the star’s last massive explosion into both nothingness and everything.

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Journey of the Universe: A new Film by Earth Charter Council Member Mary Evelyn Tucker

By ECI Sec4 ECI Sec4
Earth Charter Initiative
February 28, 2012
http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/content/articles/813/1/Journey-of-the-Universe-A-new-Film-by-Earth-Charter-Council-Member-Mary-Evelyn-Tucker/Page1.html

The new film Journey of the Universe tells the story of the evolution of the universe and, in so doing, offers the viewer a perspective of the human experience that allows us to understand our interconnections with all life. The film has been greatly influence by the Earth Charter and it reflects many of the Earth Charter’s ethics on universal responsibility, ecological integrity, and respect, reverence, and care. The film’s producer writes:

"This integration of the principles of the Earth Charter with the cosmological story of Journey of the Universe provides a unique synergy for rethinking a sustainable future. Such a synergy can contribute to the broadened understanding of sustainability as including economic, ecological, social, and spiritual well-being..."

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Interview with Mary Evelyn Tucker on KLOS Spotlight on the Community Podcast

February 8, 2012
Interview by Cynthia Fox on KLOS Spotlight on the Community Podcast
Listen to the interview:
Part 1: http://www.955klos.com/article.asp?id=2390866&SPID=38577
Part 2: http://www.955klos.com/article.asp?id=2390867&SPID=38577
Part 3: http://www.955klos.com/article.asp?id=2390868&SPID=38577 
Part 4: http://www.955klos.com/article.asp?id=2390869&SPID=38577

Journey of the Universe, by Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker

International Big History Association Newsletter
Volume II, Number 2
February 2012
http://fore.research.yale.edu/files/International_Big_History_Association_Newsletter.pdf  
http://www90.homepage.villanova.edu/lowell.gustafson/bighistory/newsletters.html

Woodbridge Residents Tell a Tale of the Universe

Bethwood Patch
January 19, 2012
http://bethwood.patch.com/articles/woodbridge-residents-tell-a-tale-of-the-universe

Yale professors' 10-year quest results in an infinite story that can be viewed in an hour.

A 10-year effort by a pair of Woodbridge residents has resulted in a "journey" of stupendous proportions. Yale professors Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim will be at the Jewish Community Center on Sunday, January 22, from 2-4 p.m. for a showing of their documentary "Journey of the Universe." The showing will be followed by a wine and cheese reception, book signing and a discussion panel titled "Our World, Our Farm" that will relate the broad message of the film to Woodbridge's Massaro Farm.

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How do we empower women?

By Elisa Parker
See Jane Do
January 12, 2012
http://www.seejanedo.com/home/6-extraordinary-jane/431-how-do-we-empower-women.html

Mary Evelyn, a renowned educator of world religions and ecology at Yale University calls us forward to "awaken to our common origins and our shared futures" and encourages us all to effect change by having the confidence to use our voice. Mary Evelyn's passion for life is evidenced in her works including Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase (Open Court Press, 2003), Moral and Spiritual Cultivation in Japanese Neo-Confucianism (SUNY, 1989) and The Philosophy of Qi (Columbia University Press, 2007). Her latest endeavor the film & book, "Journey of the Universe" co-written by Mary Evelyn and Brian Swimme will be featured at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival (January 13-15) in Nevada City, CA.

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Ten Ideas for Saving the Planet: An Overview

By John B. Cobb, Jr.
Jesus, Jazz, and Buddhism
January 2012
http://www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org/ten-ideas-for-saving-the-planet.html

1. Reality is composed of interrelated events.
2. There are gradations of intrinsic value.
3. God aims at maximizing value.
4. Humans are uniquely (but by no means exclusively) valuable and uniquely responsible.
5. Education is for wisdom.
6. The economy should be directed toward flourishing of the biosphere.
7. Agriculture should regenerate the soil.
8. Comfortable habitat should make minimal demands on resources.
9. Most manufacturing should be local.
10. Every community should be part of a community of communities.

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Gratitude, Connectedness, and Awe: The Spiritual Side of Sustainability

By Jay McDaniel
Jesus, Jazz, and Buddhism
January 2012
http://www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org/gratitude-connectedness-and-awe.html

A sustainable community can be a household, village, city, bioregion, or nation.  It is a community that is creative, compassionate, participatory, ecologically wise, and spiritually satisfying, with no one left behind. 

Such a community will support three desirable goals: social well-being, environmental well-being, and economic viability.  
 
 It can seem as if environmentalists focus on one of the three circles; that social workers and human rights focus on still another; and that economists focus on still another.  Relative to context, some circles will indeed take priority over others.  In the event of human rights violations, a focus on justice takes precedence over a viable economy and sometimes environmental concerns.  But we at JJB believe that the three circles are connected and that sustainability is an integration of the three. 

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Marin filmmakers shine at Wild and Scenic Fest

By Cari Lynn Pace
Marinscope
January 4, 2012
http://marinscope.com/articles/2012/01/05/all/arts_and_entertainment/doc4f04ab25a5f57780655263.txt

The 10th annual Wild and Scenic Film Festival, the largest film festival of its kind, combines stellar filmmaking, breathtaking cinematography and inspiring storytelling. Thousands of Bay Area residents will make this year’s pilgrimage to Nevada City, Calif., a picturesque former gold mining town in the Sierra foothills, the weekend of Jan. 13-15 to view an award-winning selection of more than 117 inspiring environmental films and passionate world adventures. Mill Valley’s award-winning filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia is one of the judges in this juried festival.

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Wonder Will Guide Us

By Peter Reason
Resurgence Magazine
January 2012
http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article3566.html

The humanist project of the Western world has been based on the proposition that man is the measure of all things. It is a perspective that has increasingly separated us from our cosmic and earthly context. The late Thomas Berry pointed out long ago in The Dream of the Earth: “We are in trouble because we do not have a good story.” We are between stories, he told us; our old story is ineffective and a new one has not yet been told.

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Small But Included in the Milky Way

By Jay McDaniel
Jesus, Jazz, and Buddhism
December 2011
http://www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org/the-milky-way.html

Journey of the Universe

Many years ago, while I was driving with my son on a dark and starlit night on a country road, I turned and asked what he felt when he looked up at the stars. He paused for a moment and then said: "I feel small but included."

His phrase captures what I, too, felt that night, and what I feel as I watch the video above. The video is about the Milky Way as seen from the top of a mountain in Spain, with help from time-lapse photography. It gives you a sense of the grandeur of the Milky Way and also the beauty of life on our small planet.

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Interview with Mary Evelyn Tucker on WNPR/Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network

December 8, 2011
Interview with John Dankosky on "Where We Live"
WNPR/Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network
Listen to the interview:
http://www.yourpublicmedia.org/content/wnpr/where-we-live-chaos-and-creativity

Exploring Humanity's Place In the Journey of the Universe

Yale Environment 360
December 7, 2011
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/exploring_the_spiritual_side_of_the_journey_of_the_universe/2473/

Mary Evelyn Tucker has been one of the innovators in the study of the connections between ecology and religion. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, she talks about her work and about a new film she co-produced that points to the spiritual dimension of responding to the world’s environmental challenges.

As a pioneer in the field of religion and ecology, Mary Evelyn Tucker has long believed that science and policy alone are not enough to deal with the Earth’s most pressing environmental challenges. What’s also needed, she says, is a spiritual or religious framework for valuing the natural world, a sense that “there is something here that’s larger than us, something that’s given birth to all life forms and sustains us.” That is the essence of a new hour-long film she co-produced, Journey of the Universe, which is premiering on PBS television stations this month, and a companion book she co-authored with evolutionary philosopher Brian Swimme.

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Cosmic Consciousness: We are a Way for the Universe to Tell Its Story

By Carolyn Collins Petersen
The Spacewriter's Ramblings
December 7, 2011
http://thespacewriter.com/wp/2011/12/07/cosmic-consciousness/

Occasionally I’ve written about what I think of as the scientific history of the universe. That’s the story of the mechanics of the cosmos starting with the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago and tracing the creation of the first stars and galaxies and eventually the planets, and then on to life. It’s a compelling history and astronomers and cosmologists are still inking in the details as they learn more about things like dark matter, dark energy, and so on. I like the story, mostly. What I don’t like about it is that it seems to put humans at the top of the evolutionary chain that stretches back all those billions of years. And, that’s most emphatically NOT what cosmic history is about. There is bound to be other life out there, other planets teeming with biota of some kind–and each of those is also part of the evolutionary tree.

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Journey of the Universe (PBS) Examines Earth’s Miracles

By Bob Etier
Technorati
December 6, 2011
http://technorati.com/entertainment/tv/article/journey-of-the-universe-pbs-examines/

In simply explaining the complexities of the creation of the universe, the composition of our planet, and the intricacies of evolution and life, Brian Thomas Swimme, on-screen narrator of Journey of the Universe, sells the concept of miracles. Every element of every explanation requires an explanation, and each explanation reveals miraculous events. So what is a miracle? Taken out of the spiritual realm, isn’t it just something that can’t be explained? It seems that traveling the reverse path of creation and being, from complex organism back to one-celled organisms and beyond, we arrive at the point where “something happened,” that unexplained (unexplainable?) something, that miracle that set everything in motion.

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PBS documentary on the great journey of the universe has Yale roots

By Joe Amarante
New Haven Register
December 2, 2011
http://www.newhavenregister.com/articles/2011/12/02/entertainment/arts/doc4ed9960bc5dd3559944762.txt

Joseph Campbell meets Carl Sagan. That’s the way “Journey of the Universe” is being described by some familiar with the late thinkers’ work on PBS. The nearly hour-long film “Journey” will be shown on New York’s WNET-13 at 8 p.m. Dec. 7, and you have to appreciate its ambitious breadth.

Producer Mary Evelyn Tucker, who teaches at Yale, says the film is part of a 10-year project.

The documentary is companion to a well-regarded book, a website and an educational DVD series, which features 20 interviews with scientists, historians and environmentalists.

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Eyeopener: 'Journey of the Universe' on PBS

By Celia Wren
Commonweal Magazine
December 2, 2011
http://commonwealmagazine.org/eyeopener

Painted stars splay across the ceiling of an old Greek church. A flower blooms in slow motion. Tree roots twine serenely round the rocks of an ancient ruin. The images in the nonfiction film Journey of the Universe are luminously beautiful—and so well meshed that their flow feels almost effortless. But a great deal of effort has gone into this hour-long work, which aims to knit modern scientific knowledge and religious and humanistic perspectives into a seamless, eye-opening chronicle of cosmic and earthly evolution.

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Journey Trailer on PBS YouTube Channel

PBS YouTube Channel
December 1, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDiZdfNLaLY

Reimagine the universe story and reframe the human connection to the cosmos in this dramatic and expansive film. Filmed on the Greek island of Samos, the birthplace of Pythagoras, JOURNEY OF THE UNIVERSE is hosted by evolutionary philosopher Brian Thomas Swimme, whose stories awaken us to the beauty and complexity of our planet. Airing December 2011 on most PBS stations (check your local listings at http://pbs.org/tvschedules). Support your local PBS station now -- you make it possible for your PBS station to offer amazing performances and the opportunity to discover something new every day, whether on TV or online. To donate to your local PBS station, visit http://www.pbs.org/support

Watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDiZdfNLaLY

Top Picks: Guitar lessons from James Taylor, Keira Knightley voices Tinkerbell, and more

Christian Science Monitor
November 25, 2011
http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2011/1125/Top-Picks-Guitar-lessons-from-James-Taylor-Keira-Knightley-voices-Tinkerbell-and-more

James Taylor teaches guitar lessons on his website, Keira Knightley voices Tinkerbell in SyFy's two-part Peter Pan series, 'Journey of the Universe' space series on PBS takes viewers through the galaxy, and more top picks.

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