Three afternoon sessions have been
set aside for special presentations.
The presentations currently planned are described below.
| |
|
Special Presentation Session 1
Thursday, May 25 - 4:30-5:30 pm
Connie Barlow
presents
"River of Life"
An
Evolutionary Ritual recreating
"an epic pilgrimage from the present to the past"
and based on Ancestor's Tale
by Richard Dawkins
A more complete description can be found at:
www.TheGreatStory.org |
Imagine every
species of life alive on Earth today designating a single ambassador to
journey back through time to the very origin of life 3.8 billion years
ago. Group by group, the ambassadors meet up with one another — first
those most closely related, and then the more distantly related.
Amazingly, we humans encounter such groups of ambassadors only 40
times during the whole 3.8 billion years of time travel. That's
because all the plants have already joined with one another before their
stream of travellers merges with ours, and so forth. If we picture this
journey back through time as drops of water flowing down a watershed,
becoming rivulets, then streams, then bigger and bigger tributaries, we
begin to feel that we are all travelling on this "River of Life",
heading back to our shared "Ocean of Origin." |
|
Connie Barlow is an acclaimed author of popular science books and
articles, and developer of The Great Story website. Connie's
most recent book, The Ghosts of Evolution (Basic Books), was Amazon.com's top-recommended science book for several months. Her previous books,
Green Space, Green Time: The Way of
Science, Evolution Extended: Biological
Debates on the Meaning of Life, and From Gaia to
Selfish Genes: Selected Writings in the Life Sciences, all
explore the nexus of science, spirit, and meaning. A Unitarian
Universalist, she is a well-known developer of curricula for
children's religious education programs. Since 2002, she and her
husband (Rev. Michael Dowd) have lived entirely on the road, as
"America's evolutionary evangelists."
|
| |
|
Presentation Session 2
Friday, May 26 - 4:30-5:30 pm
Barbara
Marx Hubbard
& Alice McDonald
present
"An
Evolutionary Communion"
is
a participatory, sacred experience of silence,
prayer and Communion as participants
in Conscious Evolution |
The Evolutionary
Communion is a participatory, sacred experience inspired by the life of
Christ and other great beings, uniting our own motivation to evolve with
the Impulse of Creation unfolding within us. It places us in the
evolutionary spiral, joining together as co-creators of the next phase
of evolution. Through silence, prayer and Communion we experience
ourselves in Real Time as participants in the Planetary Birth Experience
of a universal humanity. |
|
Barbara
Marx
Hubbard
is President of the Foundation for Conscious
Evolution, received her Bachelor Degree from Bryn Mawr College
cum laude in Political Science. She took her junior year abroad
at the Sorbonne and the Ecole des Sciences Politiques in Paris.
She was given a first ever Doctorate in Conscious Evolution by Emerson
Theological Institute. Barbara has helped create the field of conscious
evolution. She wrote a first evolutionary networking “Center Letter” in
1967-69 to over 1000 people, working with Dr. Jonas Salk, Abraham
Maslow, Lancelot Law Whyte and others to ask the question: “What is the
next step for the future good?” She wrote and
narrated the Theater for the Future; a multi-media story of
creation that places humanity in the story and visualizes what
it might be like when everything we know we can do work |
| |
|
Special Presentation
Session 3
Sunday, May 28 - 3:30-4:30 pm
Bob Willard
a leading expert
on the business value of
corporate sustainability strategies
presents by webinar
"How to Lead the
Transformation to a More Sustainable Business Model."
from
his
The Sustainability Champion’s Guidebook,
due out as an
e-book in May & hardcopy in July, 2009 |
|
Bob
will draw his work together with the themes of the conference to answer
the question: How can the sustainability efforts of both businesses and
organizations lead the way
in our quest for a flourishing earth?"
(This
webinar is also an effort to test the possibilities for conference
venues thatcontribute to more sustainable types of networking, and examine if
"walking the walk"
can still produce the types of synergies that face-to-face meetings do.)
|
|
|
Bob Willard is a leading expert on the
business value of corporate sustainability strategies. He has
given hundreds of keynote presentations to corporate,
government, university, and NGO audiences on the bottom-line
benefits of sustainability strategies. He has authored two
books, The Sustainability Advantage and The Next
Sustainability Wave, and created a DVD of his presentation,
The Business Case for Sustainability. His next book,
The Sustainability Champion’s Guidebook, will be released in
spring 2009. He worked 34 years with IBM Canada, is on the faculty of
the Sustainable Enterprise Academy, and serves on the advisory board of
the Natural Step Canada. He has a PhD in sustainability from the
University of Toronto. |
|
|
|