Illustrative Activities

Activity #1: The Cosmic Walk

This first activity is a great multigenerational activity. One way to become more engaged in the new story of the evolutionary universe and to realize more fully that we have indeed emerged from the cosmos and earth and to appreciate the great time spans involved in the new origin story, is the cosmic walk. This consists in walking along a rope laid out in a spiral. the spiral represents 13.7 billion years of the cosmic and evolutionary journey. It begins in the center of the spiral where there is a candle representing the great flaring forth of the cosmos and continues to the end of the spiral, which is the present moment. Along the way events important in the history of the cosmos and earth are marked, the space between the events being proportional to the actual time span between the events as they occurred in history of the cosmos. One event, for example is the creation the sun and the planets within the Milky Way Galaxy 4.6 billions years ago. The preparation of a clothesline with key events marked on it and the cards to explain those special events, can itself be engaging and a valuable group project.

When the actual cosmic walk is done, it can be done in silence or there can be appropriate music accompanying those who are walking. Sometimes one person reads a description of the major events when the walker come to them, or they may be read by each individual walker as they come to place that is labeled. This is a multigenerational activity.

Materials

• A length of thick yarn or rope to represent the time-line of the universe. Total length is arbitrary. These are the measurements we use. 130 feet. The line is then divided into intervals (10 feet equals 1 billion years) when special events took place. Tie a piece of colored yarn at each interval so it is always visible or use colored tape.
• A tall candle to be placed at the center of the spiral or a bouquet of wild flowers or grasses, a bowl of stones, etc.
• A small taper candle to be carried by each participant if you use candles.
• 24 small vigil (votive) candles in glass containers to be placed at each interval marker or a small dish at each station to receive a stone or small vase or glass to receive a flower.
• 24 individual papers with or without pictures, describing the event plus the narration.

Note: We have found that candles can be difficult to work with. Outdoors they blow out and worry the carrier about their candle or even indoors they can be difficult to light, etc. The purpose is to depict the big bang at the center and that everything comes from that. So the pile of stones or bouquet seems to work just as well. Be creative and think of what would work where you are creating this event.

Music

Use any appropriate solemn/contemplative/yet sometimes-energetic piece.  We use Holst’s The Planets or a custom-made tape, which we can make available on a loan basis. Some use The Fairy Ring by Mike Rowland. (Have someone at the music source to turn down the volume when each person speaks and then back up loudly for the walking.)

People

1 narrator

Participants (hopefully 25 (including the narrator), one for each “event”—however fewer can do it and double up by walking twice.

Procedure

In advance, in a large room, the rope is laid out in a spiral, which is large enough for people to walk it. Pre-light the candles and then blow them out and straighten the wicks for easier lighting during the walk. Also put the piece to read, face down, next to each candle, dish, or vase so the walker can easily light the candle and then pick up the paper to read.

The narrator stands off to the side and explains the procedure, reads the introductory words: This is a story, the story of the Cosmos, the story of Earth, the story of human, of gazelle, of mountain, the story of you and me. It is the narrative of one single integrated activity, Universe. (Start the music) In the beginning was the Mystery. Through the Mystery all things came to be. Not one thing had its being but through the Mystery.

The narrator then goes to the middle of the spiral and lights the center candle and reads:

“Some 13.7 billion years ago our Universe flashes into existence. Time, space, and energy become the gifts of existence.”

The narrator then solemnly walks the spiral.

Then one by one the participants pick up a sheet with an event (in chronological order), goes to the center of the spiral, lights their taper, and walks to the next unlit votive candle, lights it and reads from their sheet. Have each person go to the center when the person ahead of them has walked half their distance. This helps keep a good rhythm. The order and events read aloud are:

300,000 years later—As the Universe continues expanding, small differences in the density of matter are stretched into gigantic filaments of streaming gases, forming the Cosmic Web, the primordial creator of structure.

200 million years later—Concentrated by the gravitational force of dark matter these gaseous filaments collapse into enormous stars.

One billion years later—Flowing dark matter draws together stars, black holes, and gaseous clouds into small galaxies wherein stars are born, live, and die. Over time these clusters merge into the giant galaxies we see today.

2 billion years later—Within the interstellar dust these chemical gifts of the supernovas are nurtured into simple organic molecules, vital components for the later emergence of life.

4.6 billion years ago—Our ancestral star gives herself into the transforming mystery of a supernova. Our Sun and a great disk of matter, all the planets and other members of our solar system family, emerge from the dispersed body of our grandmother star. Here begins the story of what will become one blue-and-white pearl of a planet.

3.9 billion years ago—As the young molten Earth Quiets and cools, an atmosphere begins to form. Then, the first rain! Within the newly formed oceans a rich variety of chemicals gather together to birth the wonder of life. Earth comes alive.

3.8 billion years ago—Molten rock, now in the form of small bacteria, learns to capture the Sun’s photons and store the energy in chemical bonds. In doing so, they claim a new source of food, water, for the growing bacterial population of Earth.

1 billion years ago—Sexual procreation emerges. Single-celled organisms learn to share their genetic heritage and bequeath to their progeny an extravagance of possibilities.

600 million years ago—Predator organisms arise, ones who have learned to use the complex bio-molecules of neighboring organisms, thereby saving their own genetic resources for the development of greater physical capabilities. here begins the predator-prey dance that promotes the vast diversity of life: the power of the lion and the speed of the gazelle.

540 million years ago—Sight is invented: eyes emerge.

460 million years ago—Plants and animals move on land. Leaving the water, they seek the adventure of weather and gravity.

330 million years ago—Insect invent flight.

235 million years ago—Dinosaurs emerge. For 170 million years, these creatures explore the extremes of size, speed, and strength.

215 million years ago—Mammals emerge.

150 million years ago—Birds and flowers emerge.

65 million years ago—With the disappearance of the dinosaurs, mammals are given unlimited opportunities to explore new habitats, new food and new varieties of size, shape, defenses, and creative expressions. This new community of animals, plants, birds, and insects produce the great florescence of Earth life which will last 65 million years.

150,000 years ago—Modern humans and language emerge.

13,000 years ago—Human farming and herding emerge.

3,000 years ago—Classical civilizations and religions emerge. Over several thousand years, humans invent writing and more complex technologies and with them arise a variety of religious perspectives that gradually become institutionalized as Hinduism, Confucianism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.

75 years ago—Astronomers observe the expansion of the Universe. After 2½ million years we humans learn that we live in a developing Universe.

50 years ago—Humans discover DNA, life’s common language.

40 years ago—Scientists observe the origin of the Universe. The cosmic background radiation, still streaming from the Great Emergence, is observed by humans for the first time.

35 years ago—Earth is seen as whole from space.

Today—The Story of the Universe is being told as our sacred Story. The creativity implicit in the Great Emergence and expressed in the remarkable longing of Earth for life continues as this moment, in us, as one.

A Suggested Cosmic Walk Program

Part 1 (40 minutes)

Opening with silent worship

Brief Introduction

Words about Meditative Walking

The Cosmic Walk

Part II (10 minutes)

Query for the entire group: Is there anything you would like to share about your experience?

Part III (20 minutes)

In concentric circles, the inner circle facing out and the outer circle facing in. Both individuals who are opposite each other, answer assigned questions. One person listens for two minutes and then the facilitator marks the time and the second person listens for two minutes. Then the inner circle moves one space to the left so each person is facing a new partner. Those people then speak to another assigned questions.

Possible Questions:

• Share a memory from childhood that connects you with nature
• How in your life now do you connect with nature?
• Are you concerned about the ecological situation?

Part IV (20 minutes)

Query for the entire group: What are you doing in your own life to move toward a more ecologically sound lifestyle?

Close with some silent worship.

Activity #2: Hand Exercise
(with indebtedness to Joanna Macy)

1. Choose a partner. One person, who will go first, takes the hand of the other person. Half way through the meditation you will switch roles.
2. With both your hands and hold your partners hand. Turn it, feeling it, flexing it to become familiar with this hand
3. Hold it with care and reverence..
4. Take time to feel its warmth.
5. It is both strong and gentle. Bend and fold the fingers several times and feel their flexibility.
6. View the “map” of lines on the palm. Trace one line.
7. Look at the nails. They protect the delicate, sensitive fingers. Feel the soft, sensitive padding on the palm and fingertips.
8. Feel the skin; it is highly sensitive to touch, to heat and cold, to pressure. Are there blood vessels visible? Look at the delicate sensitive hairs on the skin.
9. No heavy shell or pelt encloses this hand. It is vulnerable; it is easy to break or burn or crush. It is an instrument of knowing as well as doing.
10. If you were anywhere in outer space, in intergalactic reaches, and you were to grasp this hand, you would know that you were home. It is only made here. This is a human hand of Planet Earth and it has taken five billion years of conditions particular to this planet to shape it.
11. Be aware of the great chasm of time concentrated in this hand. The substance of the hand came out of the explosion of a star billions of years ago.
12. Imagine all that is has caressed. Imagine all the care it has given. Imagine all the work this hand has done. Imagine all that it has made.
13. Switch roles so that the person who was active now has their hand held.
14. Hold this hand with care and reverence.
15. Feel the bones of the hand. The bone structure is highly intricate. The bones of the hand reach back into the earliest vertebrates, some 500 million years ago.
16. Note the delicacy of the musculature. This hand can play the piano or pick up the tiniest piece of sand.
17. This was a fin once in the primordial seas where life began, just as it was again in its mother's womb in this lifetime. Countless adventures since then have shaped it, shaped it in connection with the convolutions of the neocortex and frontal lobes of the brain.
18. This hand connected with the trees and wind as it refined its intelligence. The ancestors are in it, ancestors who learned to push up on dry land, to climb, to reach, to grasp, to chip rock, to gather weeds and wave them into baskets, to gather seeds and harvest them and plant them again; to make fire and carry it, banked, on the long marches through the ages of ice. It’s all in that hand from an unbroken succession of adventures.
19. It is an ancient hand, gradually created over millions of years in interaction with trees, with the earth, with food, with tools, with other living beings.
20. Similarly, open your awareness to this hand’s journey through this particular lifetime, ever since it opened like a flower as it came out of its mother’s womb. Clever hand that has learned so much: learned to reach for breast or bottle, learned to tie shoelaces, learned to write and draw, learned to wipe tears, learned to give pleasure. You know there are people living now who believe they are worthwhile and lovable, because of what that hand has told them. There are people living now whose last ouch in life will come from this hand and they will be able to go into their dying knowing they are not abandoned. You know there are people living now who will be healed in mind or body by the power that this hand allows to flow through it. So experience how much you want that hand to be strong and whole for this time, to serve its brothers-sisters beings and the planet of which it is a part. And before you part learn it by heart so that you can remember it is always part of your world. Experience how much you want it to be strong and play its part in the building of a culture of sanity and decency and beauty. Without words, express your appreciation of this hand, and your blessings for it.
21. Hold this gift of the creative sacred earth; look at it and feel it with great care.
22. Hold it in a final blessing.

Activity #3: Night time and the stars exercise

This is a challenging exercise! On a starry night, go outside and lie down, looking towards the sky. Take some time to appreciate the beauty you behold. Now close your eyes and image that you are on the “bottom” of the planet, looking “down” into the universe. Open your eyes, holding onto that image and look “down” at the stars and feel the gravity as the love of God holding you safely on the earth. This is the truth of our lives on the planet. We are held by gravity and there is no “up” or “down” on the sphere.

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