Here’s what I see through this third phase of relational meetings: as we remember and recover our radical connection with all living organisms, we may discern that Earth, with all its creatures and systems, was born of a process larger and deeper yet—the creative evolutionary process flowing and building throughout our Universe, through 13.8 billion years of time and across some 170 billion galaxies.
In a power-filled encounter with another person or a tree, bird, flower or meadow, or with a set of night stars as we lie on our backs in that meadow—we may see that all living organisms, humans included, have emerged through that Universe-wide process. We are embedded in the opulent and generous fullness of Creation, the single process throughout the whole of the Universe. Our scientific community has brought us this story-system of our Universe just this past century, and all of us are struggling to understand it and absorb its meaning. The unprecedented scale of our crisis calls us, not into merely expanding what we’ve been doing, but into an equally-unprecedented response.
That response calls for an unprecedented resource. I think that resource is now coming into our awareness. It is the system-story of Creation— of Earth, our Universe and the I-Thou dimension at the center of their creative development. We have access to the experience of that story-system and its transformative power, through a new generation of leadership workshops and expanding the scale of our relational work along the lines I’ve been exploring here. Again, my own discernment is of “seeing” in relational meetings the concrete emergence of the stories of our people, within our political economy, within nature and all its magnificent and gorgeous gifts, and as welcomed participants in Universe with its wondrous, soul-startling creativity. That discernment in part rises from a long-term and continuing “habit” of having great conversations. Those relationships and stories have brought me into recovery from my own serious addictions, restored my basic trust in the mystery and gift of other persons, of Earth and Cosmos, and in the process made me something of a mystic. 
Sunset from the ISS
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Re-visionThis is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility. 
As a result, here is what I see: the mystics of the great wisdom traditions—including those of the indigenous peoples— are right, in their insight that matter throughout Universe is not inert and isolated, but always in radical relationship with energy, and that all of reality “shimmers.”
The world’s mystics have seen, in contemporary language, that each energy event in our Cosmos carries a tiny surplus of creativity over destruction; that from that nano-surplus of creativity, life in Earth, including humans, emerged; and that this unified energy-matter carrying the conditions for life has always been present. We are enveloped and suffused by this energy-matter. We, and our children, are created through this work. This process summons us to participate in its work. In our era, this participation is our species’ Great Work, our vocation. This work gives us purpose and meaning and enormously deepened energy and imagination.
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How? We are the first human generation to see the Whole, all of Creation, and how it is working. The scientific community (alongside the evolving Wisdom traditions) is bringing this story-system in our time, new and wondrous news coming every day, right alongside terrible daily news of climate and species chaos.
This system-story re-sets us, telling us: we are not separated from Earth; this is our immediate home and hearth. So we don’t have to go around screwing ourselves up pretending we’re in control. We can stop chasing MORE, and enter recovery and remembering. We can let go of our huge illusions and delusions, slow down and stop, and in beginning to heal, open ourselves to the hope, energy and imagination that Creation in Cosmos and Earth is offering us. And in this time, in this opportunity, we do not have to feel we must reject those gifts. We can, I trust, accept and absorb them. We can choose real life, not mere commoditized existence. As we recognize all of Creation, we are re-set and re-purposed, as creative, participating members of the community embodied throughout Earth and Cosmos. Members, as Tom Berry says, of the community of subjects, where all is sacred, all gift, all sacrament, all, to use Buber’s term, I-Thou.
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Memory, native to this valley,
will spread over it like a grove,
and memory will grow into legend,
legend into song, song into sacrament.
- Wendell Berry, "A Vision."
When we recognize the Cosmic process and its story, we can re-recognize ourselves. First, the universal creative process is in our every fiber, breath and pulse-beat, every charge of every synapse of both sides of our brain. This process is bringing our species into awareness, into consciousness of the Whole throughout its development. We are beginning to articulate its story. In the emerging now, we are the dimension of Universe which is reflecting on the Whole, on itself. We use Universe’s gifts to reflect on ourselves, on the process that brought us to this point of awakening.
Second, that means that each person is cosmically significant. Each person has a cosmic dignity, sacredness and purpose—to love and celebrate all of Creation, especially our home planet, and our local place where we live, play and work; hence to work with our home planet and place, not against them.
Third, when we recognize that the universe’s process suffuses and enlivens us, we are being asked to enter mutual recognition with Cosmos.
Second, that means that each person is cosmically significant. Each person has a cosmic dignity, sacredness and purpose—to love and celebrate all of Creation, especially our home planet, and our local place where we live, play and work; hence to work with our home planet and place, not against them.
Third, when we recognize that the universe’s process suffuses and enlivens us, we are being asked to enter mutual recognition with Cosmos.
