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Multifaith Unity and the Great Story Gerald HarrisWhen I visited my brother in Southern California,he took me to see Lucy at the Bowers Museum. Shelies in a display case, a collection of carefully placedbones. She also stands as a lifelike model, short, hairyAustralopithecine, our ancestor. Lucy is the centrepiece of a display of Ethiopian discoveries, whichgraphically shows our journey of millions of yearsfrom our ape stage to who we are now. In the journey,our Homo sapiens existence appears incredibly recentand new in the world.Lucy is part of the amazing story science is tellingus about where we come from and who we are, a storywith power to unite people of all faiths. It providesa meeting place for theists and atheists, science andreligion. The Great Story offers a shared creation mythto a global civilization - and it’s the truth.The Great Story is the scientifically emerging factsof our origins, contemplated as a sacred story. Weopen to patterns of continuous evolution in universe,planet, species and civilization, and also in religion.Recognizing ourselves and our faiths as expressionsof a universe unfolding by processes we can love andtrust, we gain confidence to step into our planetaryfuture with creativity and hope.The core of The Great Story is an evolutionaryand revelatory view of the universe and of all being.Being has direction and has characteristic patterns,observable and verifiable. It evolves. Its direction andpatterns, which science is discovering, reveal attributesat the core and essence of being, which or whom wemay choose to call God or some other name, or maychoose not to name or personify.Every faith and culture may continue to cherishits own creation story. We may draw wisdom from ourtraditional myths. They benefit the world. When everyfaith and culture will accept the revelation of scienceas true, we will share among all humankind – withor without religious faith – a common origin tale ofmythical scale and profundity.Any of us who adopts an evolutionary view of theuniverse quickly observes evolution in our own faithtradition. The possibility that religion would freezepermanently at a particular stage of development, orthat a particular revelation would be the final Word,seems less likely.We observe that over centuries and millennia, ourfaiths progressively grow up in their ideas of how toplease God. Even the most conservative Christianstoday, for example, would shun the glorious genocidalmassacres by which we delighted our God a fewthousand years ago. Religion evolves. We view theologyas the evolving study of how to most successfully relateto reality. We see religion, at its best, leading culturalevolution. Any great religious prophet, viewed in thecontext of his or her own time, advances civilization.When religion understands itself as the leading edge inan ever-evolving, ever-advancing civilization, we maydo some good.Evolving how? Advancing in what direction?Science is revealing that from the initial flaring-forthof matter and time, the universe has tended relentlesslytoward differentiation, individuation, interdependenceand complexity. Systems in this universe collapse inchaos to give birth to systems of wider communionand greater complexity. Those of us who use theG-word discover that He or She loves unity in diversity.Whatever or whoever gives the universe it’s directionloves to see things break apart into new things, whichbecome fully themselves and which reunite into new,more complex interdependence than has previouslybeen - such as the human and human civilization. Ofcourse God loves us. Of course God loves the galaxy,the molecule, the cell, the sparrow, ecosystems andcities. Of course God loves the vastly diverse, complexand interdependent being that now awakens to itselfas living Earth.12May 2013 - The Canadian Friend