EARTHKEEPING NEWS A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY Volume Eleven, Number Four May/June 2002 THE "GREAT WORK" CAN BE SLOW! by Mary Fitzpatrick A small group of women in Montana have been getting together for two years to try and integrate our shared interest in ecology and spirituality. We all felt a dissatisfaction with the spiritual support available from our church, and activist connections, none of which speak to our conviction that human care for the Earth System is a deeply spiritual problem. We began coming together to share our own stories, along with articles, books, and videos we had found valuable. One of us had been exposed to Gene and Joyce Marshall's Reign of Reality two years earlier. She introduced the rest of us to this work, and we started to meet regularly to study it. Then we read Thomas Berry's The Great Work, and Berry and Brian Swimme's The Universe Story. We held a Cosmic Walk at the winter solstice, introducing a larger number of our friends to these ideas. For the past six months we have been meeting on a weekly basis, studying first the Canticle of the Cosmos video series, and now Earth's Imagination, both by Brian Swimme. The four of us are looking for opportunities to introduce more folks in Billings to the excitements and satisfactions of participating in the Great Work. GUEST EDITOR NACCE Board member Mary Fitzpatrick lives in Billings, Montana, stardust1000@juno.com "I am a licensed counselor in private practice in Billings. I have been developing an interest in ecology since before I knew the word. Later I began to see that my spirituality was very much connected with how I treat the whole planet, not just other people. "My graduate degree is in counseling; my Bachelor's is in physics. I am treasurer of the Northern Plains Resource Council, a grassroots organization protecting democracy, people, land, air and water from corporate depredations. I am also on the board of the local public radio station." Home     Table of Contents