By Donella Meadows

–November 7, 1990–

“We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story,” says cultural historian Thomas Berry. “The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it is no longer effective.

“Our traditional story … shaped our emotional attitudes, provided us with life purposes, and energized action. We awoke in the morning and knew where we were. We could answer the questions of our children. We could identify crime, punish transgressors. Everything was taken care of because the story was there.

“We need something that will supply in our times what was supplied formerly by our traditional story. We need a story that will educate us, a story that will heal, guide, and discipline us and give the future some satisfying direction.”

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According to the Onondaga nation of northeastern North America, before there was an Earth there was only water and sky. In the sky was a great tree, full of fruits, flowers, and seeds. One day, prompted by a dream, the Great Chief pulled up the tree, which left a big hole in the sky. His wife, pregnant with a child, peeped through the hole, and leaned over too far. She slipped through, grasping a handful of seeds from the branches of the tree as she fell.

The animals of the waters saw her falling toward them and felt anguish, because they knew she couldn’t live in the waters. The swans flew up and caught her and supported her with their wide wings. The muskrat dove deep and brought up mud, which the Great Turtle held on his back. In this way they made the Earth. The swans brought the Sky Woman to live on this Earth and bear her child there, from whom came all people. The seeds in her hand fell into mud, sprouted, and grew up into all the living things of the land.

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According to modern physics, the universe began with a Big Bang 20 billion years ago, and it has been expanding ever since. For the first seconds after the Big Bang the universe was an undifferentiated plasma, which cooled after a few minutes into protons and neutrons. After a million years or so of expansion, these atomic particles settled into the elements hydrogen and helium. They gradually collided and clumped together into clouds of gas, and then heavier elements, stars, and planets, one of which, Planet Earth, solidified about 5 billion years ago.

According to physicist Stephen Hawking, it is possible that a universe, as it expands, can create new universes, “baby universes,” that can split off or merge in an unending sequence. There need be nothing outside the universe, and nothing before the Big Bang, just as there is nothing south of the South Pole. The universe is self-contained, neither created nor destroyed. It just IS.

That life, much less intelligent beings, emerged from the primordial fireball is a cosmic accident.

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According to Thomas Berry the expanding, clumping, solidifying universe has been evolving in a clear progress of self-transcendence, from plasma to hydrogen, from gas-cloud to star, from planet to life, from non-consciousness to consciousness. Finally, after 20 billion years, this process has brought forth a creature that is able to be aware of the magnificence of the process itself. The human being, made literally of stardust, feels the stupendous beauty of the stars. The universe shivers with wonder in the human soul. “The human activates the most profound dimension of the universe itself, its capacity to reflect on and celebrate itself in conscious self-awareness.”

A new story is emerging, “of an intimate earth community .. of all the geological, biological, and human components. Only in recent times has such a vision become possible. We never knew enough.” Now “the time has come to lower our voices, to cease imposing our mechanistic patterns on the biological processes of the earth, to resist the impulse to control … and to begin quite humbly to follow the guidance of the larger community on which all life depends. Our human destiny is integral with the destiny of the earth.”

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Were we created by a loving and forgiving God, or by an exacting and vengeful one, who, in either case, gave us the world as our dominion — or as our responsibility?

Do we own and conquer nature; or does nature support us with kindness and generosity, even when we are foolish?

Are we an unlikely accident in an uncaring void? Or does all evolution leads up to our ability to wonder at, to celebrate, and to recognize our proper place in the celestial harmony?

Each of these creation stories motivates some of us, tells us who we are, how we fit, what our duties are. Those who believe each one find plenty of evidence to support it, yet viewed dispassionately not one of these stories is the least bit plausible. No creation story is. There is no believable way to account for the improbability and glory of creation and of our own existence.

Yet here we are. The most important task before us is to find a story that can bring us together, answer the questions of our children, open up our sense of wonder and responsibility, heal and guide us and help us find our way to the future.

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The Native American story can be found in Keepers of the Earth, by Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac (Fulcrum, Inc., Golden, Colorado.) The story according to modern physics is well told by Stephen W. Hawking in A Brief History of Time (Bantam Books). Thomas Berry’s story is in his own book The Dream of the Earth (Sierra Club Books, San Francisco) and in Brian Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, (Bear & Company, Santa Fe, New Mexico).

Copyright Sustainability Institute 1990