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New Story Groups Spring up around the United States

Mary Kay Klein has sent us information on New Story Groups that are coming into being around the country. The first meeting she was involved in was at Friends Meeting Cambridge, MA. This group began in 2005 and wrote this statement.

The “New Story Group” in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is an interfaith group that has been meeting monthly at the Friends Meeting at Cambridge (Quaker) since 2005. The name of our group “New Story” comes from Thomas Berry. Beginning with five people, we have grown to 20 or 25 attending our monthly meeting and we have a long email list of interested people who may come to special events. Fifty people attended our recent workshop, “Recovering Sacred Presence in a Disenchanted World” in October 2017. The workshops we have offered in cooperation with Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries, an interfaith group in Boston have been an important form of outreach. We meet with profound gratitude to Thomas Berry, to Brian Swimme and to Teilhard de Chardin as we would not exist as a group without their wisdom.

It has been a pleasure to be part of a group of people who have glimpsed the significance of the emerging worldview and who want to understand it more fully and live more deeply and fully within it. It is important that we seek to understand the revelations of science, particularly cosmic evolution and the fundamental discoveries in physics, in the context of a spiritual community. We have been enriched by a wealth of videos, books, articles, visiting speakers and reflections offered by individuals who are members of our group. The visitors have included Philip Clayton, Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grimm, Jennifer Morgan and Rodney Petersen. Brian Swimme’s video series Canticle to the Cosmos and Powers of the Universe have provided remarkable and compelling insights.  Some of the books that have provoked the most interest and discussion, omitting to avoid repetition the familiar and important Berry and Swimme books, are Evolution’s Purpose by Steve McIntosh, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible by Charles Eisenstein, The Wisdom Way of Knowing by Cynthia Bourgeault, Evolutionaries by Carter Phipps, and Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society by Peter W. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworksi and Betty Sue Flowers.

More information on this group is available on their website.

The New Story, Natick, Massachusetts, is an offshoot of the one in Cambridge and wrote this statement:

Our personal faith journeys have led us to the New Story Cosmology, based on the foundational work of Thomas Berry.  The seemingly intractable path of negation and division in our current politics being foisted on this Earth makes it imperative that we gain inner strength by gathering within a community of like-minded people to experience a new understanding of today’s spirituality as articulated by the ‘disciples’ of Thomas Berry.  (James Fowler’s work is insightful as well.)

And so the idea of a New Story, Natick (Massachusetts) group, after several years hoping the Cosmos would respond, finally has come together.

We meet monthly, discuss a DVD, and share thoughts about the New Story reality. We are interested in networking with other such groups, nationally and internationally.

Another offshoot of the Cambridge group meets in Middlebury, Vermont.

Let us know of other New Story groups and what they are doing.