Talk:The Great Story

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 22 September 2006. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

This article survived a Vote for Deletion. The discussion can be found here. -Splash 20:25, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

As a fellow traveler of the Great Story movement, I am happy to see it appear in Wikipedia. I also recall the puzzlement I experienced when I first heard some of its aspects described by Brian Swimme, circa 1990, when he appeared in a videotape about Matthew Fox's Creation Spirituality initiative. "Now there is a guy," I thought to myself as I watched Brian wave his arms around with a beatific expression on his face as he rhapsodized about the earth falling in love with the sun, "who is certifiable if there ever was one." This was a sad misapprehension on my part, but I expect that many people will initially react to this topic the same way I reacted to Brian.

It helped a lot for me to locate these ideas on the map of intellectual history and to realize that are not simply floating out in the ether of New Age religion. The Great Story (or New Story, as it has also been called) is the grand child of some of the thinking of Henri Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin. It is the child of Thomas Berry and has been charmingly elaborated by his apostle Brian Swimme and the many others who have, like Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd, attempted to find a language for the Great Story that is accessible to people outside the tiny world of radical Catholic cosmology. It is a tough homework assignment because the Great Story does not explicitly address eternal religious concerns such as why bad things happen to good people or whether reward or punishment occurs in this life or in another (or both). But it does have a theology of meaning: the universe is our spiritual as well as physical home as humans, as much as it is the home of comets and koala bears. And we are ordained, it asserts (as an axiom, I would say) to play a unique role in the biography of the universe -- to be its imagination. That's enough "clarification" for one contributor. Hope it helps.

[edit] Veracity of The Great Story

This is not a POV... It is rooted throughout all (but the most recent several hundred years) of our history. It is not derivative of just one or two books. This is an entry deserving to be in Wikipedia. It should stay and I predict it will be built upon and upon and will become one of the most significant parts of Wikipedia. Kevin W. Kelley - Author of the New York Times Bestselling Book - "The Home Planet"

--Good Science, Well Told--

This is a good summary of a lot of science and well written. I agree with Kevin's prediction of potential for this article to become a key article. Andy C. Reese, Author of "Rational Spirituality"

[edit] Comments

Looks much improved since my last visit, but still confusing. I'm trying to figure out how this article could feel more encyclopedia-ish to me. What is the Great Story? The first sentence says it's a belief, but it sounds like it's actually a metaphor. But if it's a metaphor, then why are there "advocates"? But then it's called a "movement"? If the belief, the metaphor, and the movement all have the same name, then it needs to be explicitly so. And if there is a movement, it would help to define who/where/what/when this movement is, events and books and organisations belonging to this movement, and so forth. Right now it seems like it is a metaphor, not a religion or movement, and if the article could be simplified to just follow one topic like a normal encyclopedia article:

  • History of the metaphor -- origins, why a new story/metaphor/viewpoint was needed, the intentions of who started it
  • Controversy/conversation -- what are some of the different viewpoints that authors have on it? By outlining their differences, the reader can get a clearer picture into what the Great Story is
  • Similar issues -- are there any sister ideas? Movements? Similar metaphors? The reader might know about some of these related topics, and it would help them understand.
  • What's going on today -- what organisations are currently involved?

-Chira 02:03, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I didn't remove it, but is there a reason that the Holocene is characterized by the fact that it's a mass extinction? --John_Abbe 17:30, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

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