What Does God Look Like in an Expanding Universe?
WHAT DOES GOD LOOK LIKE IN AN EXPANDING UNIVERSE  Edited by Jim Schenk    www.imagoearthpublishing.org    BOOK REVIEW BY JOYCE QUINLAN  Be sure that this new anthology is high on your reading list for 2007.  One fascinating reason for the   recommendation is that the articles will leave you with an unmistakable conviction that a new human consciousness is alive and well--even flourishing-- among us in spite of these dark days of war and anxiety.  As one of the contributors, Diarmuid O'Murchu puts it:  "We are going forward, lured by the future that the Creative Spirit always opens up for us.... This is not the same as the utopian promise of modern consumerism, on the one hand, and evangelical religion on the other.  It is the hope born out of struggle and engagement, sustained by evolutionary imagination, and nourished by communities of resistance and prophetic vision."    Such expressions of trust in the creative evolutionary process of the universe pervade each of the seventy-eight essays, and with an enormous diversity of point of view.    On checking the index of the volume, I discovered that the most frequently used words in the articles (other than evolution itself, were beauty, celebration, creativity, and wonder.  To find the repetition of such concepts in a book which explores what God and Life are really all about, emphasizes a new consciousness, shifts one out of the paradigm of extreme individualism, hierarchy, competition into one of unity, interconnectedness, compassion.  Furthermore, the seventy-eight articles come from 20 states representing the East Coast, West Coast, Middle America as well as Australia, Ireland, England, and Canada,.  This geographical spread lends power to the conviction that the same Spirit, filling all time and space, is moving everywhere to tell us the ancient truth through the New Story of the wholeness of Divinity and Universe.  Thomas Berry puts in this way in his interview with Jim Schenk:  "The universe is the celebrator --Joyce Quinlan, PhD., was a Benedictine for 37 years.  She has a doctorate in Future Studies from Union Institute and Univ. She was a college English professor and a counselor before retiring five years ago. She continues to lead Spiritual eldering coursesWhat Does God Look Like in an Expanding Universe is a treasure! What a worthwhile project it represents, and what an inspiring collection of readings! I am totally "taken" with it.  I enjoyed reading the editor s story. It rings with such integrity, as does he and his wife s life paths. The questions asked are my husband Bob's and my "life's persistent questions", and I keep coming back to this phenomenon of human consciousness and its spiritual dimensions amidst our so destructive behaviors.  I savored each page and felt so full of anticipation every time I sat down to read the book. It made for wonderful late-fall fireside reading!  Yes to Earth and our capacities to grow! --Marilyn Welker, founder of Simply Living in Columbus, Ohio.  The purpose of Simply Living is to educate its members and others to live responsibly and sustainablyIf the ancients had known what we know, "they would have drawn some very different conclusions about God, life and death," writes Jim Schenk in the introduction to this book, which contains diverse but mostly compatible thoughts from writers who find today's science illuminates religious concepts rather than opposing them. Schenk, as editor, has organized the brief but frequently pithy essays into three sections, each of which asks a very big question: "Where do we come from?" "Why are we here?" "Where are we going?" These sections are sub-divided into "Personal Perspectives" and "Universal Perspectives." Schenk, founding member of the ecological education organization ImagoEarth and of Enright Ridge Urban Eco-Village in Price Hill, says most of the articles and interviews "are original...obtained specifically for this book." Among the more than 50 writers are Thomas Berry, David Spangler, Joanna Macy and William Irwin Thompson. An alphabetical listing of contributors includes brief information about them and their individual ideologies. The book's tone is upbeat but not necessarily warm and fuzzy. Diarmuid O'Murchu, priest and social psychologist, is not sure that humans as we know them will continue to exist but projects "a more developed (and hopefully, more benign) species, and the universe will continue to flower and flourish as God designed it to do." The brevity of the essays keeps them readable but means the reader is sometimes jumping fast between large ideas. Schenk's own orientation is strongly ecological, springing from concern over "the virtual human disconnection from the planet." (Jane Durrell) Grade: B+ --Jane Durrell In Cincinnati's City Beat Newspaper