Over the past 50 years, as new knowledge has vastly increased and our experience of life has changed, we find our sense of our place as human persons in the world changing, too. We may feel out of step, confused and overwhelmed at times, and less in control than we thought as we find that many of our previous assumptions are no longer true. Meanwhile, the pace of life has accelerated. We are exposed to more because of information technology, travel, and urban living, making it difficult for us to integrate all that is new with what life has taught us up to now.

Fortunately, we also have access to some vision-altering new facts, products of remarkable scientific discoveries that have radically altered our knowledge base over the past 50 years.

The “big bang” theory of the origin of the universe, the Hubbell space telescope’s revelations about the age, the extensiveness and the behavior of all the universe contains, the discovery by biologists of DNA, the finding by physicists that at the heart of all matter is not some inert particle but a dynamism – these are just a few of science’s contributions that have revolutionized our understanding of the nature of the created universe. The implications of the new insights make obsolete Sir Isaac Newton’s mechanistic view of the universe, the worldview that has been the context for religious doctrine and formal education for generations.

From the new insights, a new “cosmology” - is being born. A philosophy far more comprehensive than a worldview, it draws on diverse sources of wisdom: of indigenous people all over the world, of the great world religions, of women in the past and the present, and of the new knowledge coming from science. From these combined wisdoms flows a new understanding of the nature of creation. In the new cosmology no creature is better than any other because all are loved by God. All are related. In the words of Catholic writer Thomas Berry, the universe is not a collection of objects but a communion of subjects, mutually indwelling.

Not only does this belief give human persons our rightful place in creation, but it honors the value of every being in the universe and connects us all. Within this new cosmology nearly all of our assumptions about life, God, relationships, good and evil, matter, time and space need to be revisited and re-understood. It calls on us to recognize that we, created in the image of our Creator God, are called upon to become a form of human generosity. “If [the deep nature of the Infinite] is based on grace and generosity, the image will be also”. (Beatrice Bruteau. Radical Optimism. Sentient Publication. Boulder, CO, 2002, p. 135.)

As Christians and as Catholics, our new “story” must be told from deep in our hearts, in the heart of the world and in the heart of God where all of reality is centered. In every age God’s self-revelation has come anew with freshness and new life. We, the receivers of God’s self-revelation, are also the storytellers, reflecting God’s own self as we grow and change. We humans are creatures who have a unique consciousness and capacity for making choices for action to have influence on our world. To know what those choices should be, we join other seekers of truth and lovers of life, and use the resources we have, including our present-day life experience shared among us. What will come is a new theology and world view that is attractive because it is relevant. It will transform how we relate and how we do things from agriculture to politics, from liturgy to education.

As a way of helping to bring about this transformation, I recommend a set of principles that can serve as a foundation. “The Earth Charter,” drafted by an international commission in 1987 and launched in the year 2000, seeks to inspire us to take up our shared responsibility for the well-being of the human family and the larger living world. It challenges us to examine the way we live and to choose better ways based on what we now know of the world, our “divine milieu.” Its spirit of hope is expressed in “respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, social and economic justice, and democracy, nonviolence and peace.” (www.earthcharter.org)