Amazing Journey! The Universe and Me	Outline To become familiar with the 13.7 billion year Story of the Universe, understand its significance and implication, and its role in shaping the future of life on Earth. To understand everything is a subject to be reverenced, not an object to be exploited; everything is interconnected and related. To foster an ecological spirituality. To critique western culture and institutions in light of the new cosmology, to be open to what is required of us, and to be encouraged by the signs of change around us.   Stories...Stories…Stories: This section explores all sorts of stories – personal stories, mythical stories, old and new stories – and the story that articulates our cosmology, the largest context of all, the “text without a context.” The Story of the Universe: This section tells the scientific evolutionary story of the unfolding universe, the cosmic venture of some 13.7 billion years. The first selection in this session is taken from the introduction of The Universe Story by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry. It is a compact version, which launches the group on its journey. The Three Primal Principles: Everything that exists is characterized by three primal principles: differentiation, subjectivity or interiority, and communion. These three dynamic principles controlled the entire evolutionary process from its explosive origin – to shaping of Earth, the emergence of life, of consciousness, and of all that follows. You can’t find anything whatsoever that isn’t an illustration of these three principles. If you remove any one of them, the whole universe collapses. Only incorporating these three principles into all aspects of human free decisions will insure the continuance of life toward a future of hope and fulfillment. For this noble goal, the readings of this section are offered. New Story – New Cosmology: This session begins with a review of some of the key concepts, new understandings that flow from our grasp of the scientific unfolding story of the universe. This is a new time. These concepts indicate the need for redefining the human project: who humans are, what role humans play in the total scope of existence. The old familiar paradigm of human superiority over other beings no longer fits; the old cosmology based on a static universe is no longer adequate. The story of human emergence in the 13.7 billion years of evolution indicates a shift to a new paradigm, a cosmology that situates the human within the story. It affects every avenue of life. It calls us to move into a new era, which Thomas Berry names the Ecozoic Era. This is an exciting time to be alive as the readings in this section indicate. Impact of the Story: In this session, we draw together the threads of the study, that which awakens us to our situation, to what hinders progress and needs change. The Story calls out to us to be more than we have been, our own evolution of becoming more of whom we can be. Let this call energize us as we engage in the paradigm shift and perform what Thomas Berry characterizes as our “Great Work.”