Featured Event

The Heart of the Cosmos:

Humanity and the New Story

Brian Swimme’s primary field of research is the nature of the evolutionary dynamics of the Universe. Swimme brings us a meaningful interpretation of the human as an emergent being within the Universe and Earth. His central concern is the role of the human within the Earth community. A part of Dr. Swimme's elegantly stated message is:

The center of the cosmos is not ‘mathematical science,’ nor is it ‘inside science,’ nor is it ‘owned’ by science. The center of the cosmos is each event in the cosmos. Each person lives in the center of the cosmos…

…The primary challenge of this cosmological transformation of consciousness is the awareness that each being in the universe is an origin of the universe. ‘The center of the cosmos’ refers to that place where the great birth of the universe happened at the beginning of time, but it also refers to the upwelling of the universe as river, as star, as raven—as you—the universe surging into existence now.”

Where we as humans are in the story of the cosmos, and how we got here, derived from science.

II. 2 - 4:00 pm: Cosmology and Ecology
The relationship of human beings and Earth, and the need to rebalance human activity with “earth activity.”

III. 6 - 8:00 pm: Cosmology and Spirituality
The story of “new heavens and a new earth” entails a new human consciousness and a new way of being in the cosmos.

Entire day of three lectures: $90 ($60 for First Community Church members)
Sessions 1 and 2 only: $75 ($50 for First Community Church members)
Session 3 only: $30 ($20 for First Community Church members)

Dr. Brian Swimme is a mathematical cosmologist on the graduate faculty of the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. (1978) from the University of Oregon specializing in gravitational dynamics, mathematical cosmology and singularity of theory. Swimme was a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington from 1978-1981. He was a member of the faculty at the Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality at Holy Names College in Oakland, California from 1983-1989.

His published work includes The Universe is a Green Dragon (Bear and Company, 1984), The Universe Story (Harper San Francisco, 1992) written with Thomas Berry, and The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos (Orbis, 1996).