The NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals a portion of the Milky Way’s dense core in a new light. An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the Sagittarius C (Sgr C) region, along with some as-yet unidentified features. A large region of ionized hydrogen, shown in cyan, contains intriguing needle-like structures that lack any uniform orientation.

Source: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and S. Crowe (University of Virginia).

“Nearly a million miles away, the James Webb Space Telescope just took a picture. Since transmitting its first data in late 2021, Webb has made stunning discoveries, including a plume of water spanning 6,000 miles in our solar system and a galaxy that formed only 390 million years after the Big Bang, or more than 13 billion years ago.”

“A Beginner’s Guide to Looking at the Universe.”
By Kate LaRue. New York Times Magazine. November 5, 2023.

The Collected Thoughts of Thomas Berry

Photo by Lou Niznik

We are pleased to announce a series of audio tapes from Thomas Berry!

In 1998, the cultural historian Thomas Berry released a series of perceptive reflections on our environmental crises and the Great Work of transitioning to an era of human-Earth flourishing. 

In these recordings, Berry is in conversation with Brian Thomas Swimme. The audio tapes were produced by Bruce and Pamela Bochte. We are delighted to make them available for the first time in digital form to celebrate Thomas’s inspiration for Journey of the Universe and the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, which just commemorated the 25th anniversary of its founding on October 20, 1998. 

We will be releasing approximately one part of these conversations per month. 

They can be heard from the Thomas Berry website and the Forum YouTube channel. 

Listen now to Part 2: The Millennial Vision with an introduction from Sam King.

Upcoming Events

Love Letters: To the Earth – From the Earth

On the occasion of COP 28, Green Exodus is hosting Love Letters: To the Earth – From the Earth, three guided letter-writing sessions Nov. 20, 27 and Dec. 4, from 6:30- 7:30 pm on Zoom. Each session will have a different focus. 

Facilitators: Tonya Lailey and Sarah Arthurs
Suggested donation: $30 

A Candle Light Vigil (in partnership with Kairos) including sharing of the letters is set for the evenings of Dec. 8-10 (details to be confirmed). The letters can also be sent out into the world.

Register here.


The Great Work: Meeting Thomas Berry Again for the First Time

The Powers of the Universe

“We humans have brought ourselves to a fascinating and challenging point. By our numbers and our choices, particularly in the last 200 years, we’ve grown into an equivalent of the geological forces that have shaped our planet over its 4.5 billion year life…

…Now that we have become this force, where do we look for inspiration on how to act in our new role? To the universe itself, suggests cosmologist Brian Swimme amplifying the thinking of Thomas Berry, with whom he collaborated for many years. In 2005 Brian recorded a series of talks on the powers of the universe, the modes the cosmos itself operates by. These are the processes that gave birth to everything, including us. He chose eleven of them: seamlessness, centration, allurement, emergence, homeostasis, cataclysm, synergy, transmutation, transformation, interrelatedness, and radiance. 

I have been slowly exploring these powers to see what our oldest teacher can tell us about moving toward the just, nurturing, and sustainable world we all desire.”

Click here to read these essays by Betsey Crawford.

“We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the possible in motion. And yet here we are, atoms with consciousness, each of us a living improbability forged of chaos and dead stars. Children of chance, we have made ourselves into what we are — creatures who can see a universe of beauty in the feather of a bird and can turn a blind eye to each other’s suffering, creatures capable of the Benedictus and the bomb. Creatures who hope.”

Read more of Popova’s reflections in the Marginalian here.

News Articles 

“69% of young people experience 'sacred moments' in nature, says new poll”
By Adelle Banks. EarthBeat, November 9, 2023.

“A ‘Big Whack’ Formed the Moon and Left Traces Deep in Earth, a Study Suggests”
By Kenneth Chang. The New York Times, November 1, 2023.

“In Maine, a return of tribal land shows how conservation can succeed.”
By Bina Venkataraman. The Washington Post, November 1, 2023.

“What Is COP28? And Other Questions About the Big U.N. Climate Summit.”
By Lisa Friedman. The New York Times, November 20, 2023. 

Periodization in Big History

The Journal of Big History is a publication of the International Big History Association.

Please send letters, inquiries, or article submissions to jbh@bighistory.org.

Cosmogenesis: The Story of Us

Cosmogenesis: The Story of Us is a public media arts initiative in embodied cosmology. In this cross-sector collaboration between the University of Colorado Boulder’s Fiske Planetarium and CU’s Theater & Dance Department, together with local playwright Rebecca Sophia Strong, local musicians and a Spanish interpreter, we are creating a cultural program that integrates traditional stage theater with digital and emergent planetarium technology.   Cosmogenesis is the culmination of decades of research and interviews with female scientists of color, Native American spiritual elders, evolutionary cosmologist Brian Swimme, and cultural change experts. Strong brings to this work her expertise and dedicated work as a teacher, mentor, writer, performer, and clinical psychotherapist.

Cosmogenesis has been offered a $5,000 matching grant by a generous donor. We need your help to match this offer and raise an additional $5,000 before December 21, 2023. With your contribution, we can continue to share the 13.8 billion-year story of Earth and Cosmos on a global scale. Together, we can create a space-tacular, cosmic, intergalactic, universal love story - just the kind our world needs. 

Recent Events

Metamorphosis: Create the Transformation We Need Now
Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York City, NY, USA
November 9, 2023 @ 8:30am – 7:00pm

John Grim, Mary Evelyn Tucker and Marcelo Gleiser presented on “The Journey of Our Universe.” Gleiser’s latest book is titled The Dawn of a Mindful Universe: A Manifesto for Humanity’s Future.


Big History and Global Evolution
International Big History Association
Lomonossov Moscow State University
October 24-26, 2023

Last month Lomonossov Moscow State University held the International Congress Globalistics-2023. In the framework of this congress, the Eurasian Center for Big History & System Forecasting in collaboration with the Faculty of Global Studies at Lomonossov Moscow State University organized the 5th International Symposium “Big History & Global Evolution”.

Click here for more information!

7th Annual Flaring Forth Celebration with Brian Thomas Swimme
Online event with Brian Thomas Swimme and Thomas Spiritbringer
Theme: “Facing The Future Wisely” 
Celebrating the 109th Anniversary of Thomas Berry's birth
November 9, 2023

Watch the recording here.

The Noosphere at 100: Human Collective Consciousness
Hosted by the Human Energy Project
International House at University of California, Berkeley
November 17-19, 2023

Click here for more info!

Journey of the Universe film screening and discussion
Panel with Confucian scholar, Xinzhong Yao, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and John Grim. 
Yale Beijing Center. September 10, 2023.

Watch the recording here.

In Memoriam

The Journey of the Universe community mourns the passing of Michael Dowd, a celebrated author, educator, and ecotheologian who advocated for a marriage of science and religion within an evolutionary context (1958-2023).

Below is a 5-minute artistic reflection of photos and music created by Michael’s wife and mission partner, Connie Barlow.

In her words, “this video entails a collection of photos, largely chronological, that colleagues will recognize. It begins with Michael’s early experience of the work of Thomas Berry, in what came to be known as the “epic of evolution.” Michael blended those learnings with his previous career as a Christian pastor, and thus was born his writing and speaking focus on what came to be called “evolutionary Christianity.” In December 2012, he woke up with horror to the speed and scale of the climate crisis. A philosophy major in college, but autodidact ever since, Michael devoured books and blogs on the science of climate change and what lay ahead. This rapidly shifted his attention from evolution as foreground to “ecology as the new theology.” (Thomas Berry, who had died in 2009, had emphasized both.) It was then that Michael donned a green clergy shirt and became “Reverend Reality” in his guest speaking around the country.”

Click here to watch this video tribute.