86 NATURE-BASED EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY
about ourselves and the Earth. We discuss the story of the unfolding
of the universe and present three alternative epistemologies that we
have named as an epistemology of the sacred, an epistemology of the
senses and an epistemology of intimacy. We also explore implications
of these stories for possible ways of taking action to address the
challenges of our time and for finding sustainable ways of being in
the world.The universe story
The class is seated in a circle around a large open space. The student
presenter takes a long rope and lays it out on the floor in the shape
of a spiral. At the center she places a sign for the Big Bang, the
primordial flaring forth of our cosmos an estimated 15 billion years
ago. At intervals she places candles and other signs: Galaxies and
Supernovas: 10–14 billion years ago; The Solar System: 5.0 billion
years ago; The Living Earth: 4.0 billion years ago; The Proterozoic
Era: 2.0 billion years ago; The Paleozoic Era: 550 million years
ago; The Mesozoic Era: 235 million years ago; The Cenozoic Era:
67 million years ago; The Paleolithic Era: 2.6 million years ago; The
First Humans ( Homo sapiens ) 200,000 years ago. She reads a summary
of each period she has named and then invites the class to walk the
spiral in silence, considering each era and the place of humans in
the spiral.
This is an enactment of the universe story (Swimme and Berry
1992), the unfolding of the cosmos. Later in class we discuss what
we have experienced in this ritual. We speak especially about our
human presence on the planet in the context of the 13.5 billion
years of the universe story and the 4.5 billion years of Earth’s story.
We are acutely aware that Homo sapiens , from which contemporary
humans descend, emerged only about 200,000 years ago. The ritual
presentation of this story has a profound impact on the class, seeing
how short a time we humans have been on Earth and yet the impact
we have had on the Earth’s ecosystems in that time.