The Universe Story

Brian Swimme ponders the many ways people have told the story since the dawn of history. In the last 400 years, despite scientific insight, our failure to find a meaningful approach to the universe has left a distorted mode of human presence upon the Earth. Now an exciting new story is emerging, doing for us what the mythic stories did for tribal peoples and earlier civilizations. This new cosmology will be the comprehensive context of the future for the various peoples of Earth. With a Ph.D. in mathematical cosmology, Swimme is Director of the Center for the Story of the Universe, San Francisco. After a 10-year collaboration, he and Thomas Berry in 1992 coauthored The Universe Story. His other books include The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos and The Universe is a Green Dragon.

Friday, 8 PM

Contemporary Christian Sexual Ethics

Margaret Farley proposes a framework for Catholic Christian sexual ethics appropriate in today's world. Taking account of historical perspectives, she aims to develop an ethic both true to the tradition and responsive to contemporary questions and experience. A Sister of Mercy, Dr. Farley holds the Gilbert Stark Chair in Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School. She is a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and of the Society of Christian Ethics. She co-chairs the Yale Interdisciplinary Bioethics Project and directs the Yale Divinity School Project on Gender, Faith and Responses to HIV/AIDS in Africa. Her six books include Compassionate Respect: A Feminist Approach to Medical Ethics. Her forthcoming book is Just Love: A Framework for a Contemporary Christian Sexual Ethics.

Saturday, 10:30 AM

The Creative Fire

Clarissa Pinkola Estés
is an internationally recognized scholar, award-winning poet, diplomate senior Jungian psychoanalyst, and cantadora in the Latina tradition. She is the director of La Sociedad de Guadalupe, a human rights education organization. She has served as post-trauma specialist to Columbine High School and its community in the four years after the 1999 massacre. She has many works in audio and print. Besides her national bestseller, Women Who Run With the Wolves, her books include The Gift of Story and The Faithful Gardener. Her forthcoming book is The Dangerous Old Woman.

Sunday, 9 AM.