Last evening I had plans to listen to a teleseminar that a friend told me about. Brian Swimme would be giving a live lecture. He is a scientist and cosmologist whose work has inspired me for the better part of two decades, who I quoted almost as often as Carl Jung in my doctoral dissertation. All you have to do is register on a website, www.evolutionaryspirituality.com and they tell you how to phone in to hear their lectures and teleconferences. Cool. It was supposed to start at 8:30 EST. I got situated and ready to call, only to find out that the schedule had changed to start at 10:00. I didn’t think I would have brain power by then, so decided to wait to download the lecture from their site today; which I have done and can’t wait to listen.

So, what to do when I’m all geared up to hear Brian Swimme? I put on a recently received Netflix movie, Taking Woodstock, having no idea what to expect. To my delight and surprise I laughed out loud and cried the happy kind of tears all the way through it. Why did I not hear more about this movie when it came out? What makes Ang Lee Ang Lee? How can he be such an extraordinary filmmaker?  This movie is so great!  I highly recommend it; and will add that if you haven’t seen the original Woodstock documentary, see that first because Lee makes a lot of visual references to that film and it is a lot more fun if you know what he’s doing.

The delight continued as I realized that the universe was playing with me. I had been looking forward to hearing Brian Swimme’s recent thoughts about how to re-invent ourselves as humans, how to allow for an entirely new cosmological perspective to replace the dead, dying, crippling, destructive one we are living. He has a way of  bringing light into the darkness of our collective ignorance and inertia so we can see what went wrong and how to re-think such things as war, separateness, man against man, man against nature. I remember him saying once, “Something sinister happened to the human group.” He has an evolutionary perspective that is clear, helpful and inspiring.

However, this movie told a brilliant and amazingly similar story to what I was hoping to enjoy last night. It shows a miserable, rotting, impoverished, unhappy little community in New York unable to bring any spark of life back to its world when suddenly the Woodstock phenomenon blew through on very short notice. Three days of peace, love and music bringing with it an astoundingly new bright shiny cosmological perspective. It can happen that fast, and that thoroughly, my mind was saying. It can, it really can my mind was saying! Thinking about Brian Swimme set me up to see and appreciate this movie in a way I’m not sure I would have otherwise.

The universe is exploding with intelligence and possibilities. How can we imagine that we are stuck? We have to stop imagining such ridiculous things and re-imagine everything. We can, we can, we can. And we must. And we will. 

From Lewis Carroll: “`There is no use trying,’ said Alice; `one can’t believe impossible things.’ `I dare say you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. `When I was your age I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'”