Sam | And then another important part of my answer to this wonderful question is—the real dream that we have for this project is, at some point, to have the resources to collaborate with a passionate and highly skilled documentary filmmaker. The oratorio would be essentially the soundtrack source for a really beautiful documentary that contained all of the music, but most of the words transformed to beautiful visuals, maybe with some underlying text.

Kari | Oh, I think it would lend itself to that! Hopefully, somebody comes forward that you could collaborate with. I also wanted to comment on how well it integrates science with beauty and things that we ‘know’ about the universe. Then there are things that we ‘can’t know’. How does this tension inform your work?

Sam | Well again, I love this question—so insightful when you put the first ‘know’ in quotes, the ‘knowing’ of facts—the great science story—the lists of truly astounding things that we now know. Then there is the knowing of personal relationship. One thing this question prompted in me was thinking of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme’s original The Universe Story book of the early ’90s; they talk about, “How does the universe work?” In the language of Thomas Berry, there is a cosmological principle that has three elements: diversification, interiority/subjectivity, and communion.

Once you get these different identities, then they can enter into relationships. The title is Emergent Universe Oratorio, and emergence is not a new concept, but it is relatively new. It is the appearance of unpredictable, unexpected, unforeseeable dynamics and structures from elements that exist at lower/simpler levels. Everything in the universe is emerging through this process of what is called cosmogenesis. It’s the constant becoming of everything. Another way of saying it: the Universe is astonishingly creative.

Paula | It’s one of the concepts … or the takeaways for an audience, and it starts right in the title, Emergent Universe Oratorio … emergent … this idea that things are evolving or changing, that things are going to be revealed, that there’s an unfolding in life and the great humility that comes from knowing that. So the world we ‘know’, and I love the quotation marks too, because we know something but it’s not complete. Is it ever complete? We’re in an evolving world.

Kari | Let’s move onto the idea of Rising Earth Awareness, the theme of this edition, which is sort of related to ‘emergence’. How does the oratorio speak to that? And do you think the Earth is becoming more aware of us too?

Paula | Oh yes. As a matter fact, there is an Emergent Universe Oratorio phase two project that’s going to be earthbound. Sam can tell you about that.

Sam | If you are familiar with Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work, she is a Native American and a brilliant scientist. She is probably the leading authority in the world on mosses, which are among the first plants, and which are responsible for you and me being able to have this conversation.

Paula | Robin’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass, is tremendous. We’re beginning a  collaboration on a piece that, hopefully, will be reflecting earth awareness, so it’s going from the cosmos down into the world of mosses and lichens—very earthbound. One way to say this in terms of rising earth awareness is that once you take on board the story of the universe and you understand where we came from and the factors that have led to the development of the Earth, then you can begin to understand where we are, and perhaps where we’re going.

Sam | Your question also suggests Lynn Margulis’ and James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis—that the Earth is a sentient being, a self-organizing system that is actually experiencing a fever and is responding with an immune response to that fever, and that immune response is this conversation we’re having. There are hundreds of thousands of little NGOs, individuals, and groups like Kosmos, Emergence Magazine, Bill McKibben’s 350.org, and so forth, all contributing to a global immune response to the planetary threat.

Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, said, “The more I examine the universe and study the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known that we were coming.”   

Freeman Dyson is, I would say, one of the most skeptical scientists on Earth. For him to say that is a powerful affirmation that the Earth is becoming more aware of us too.

Kari | I wanted to talk a little bit about the film, Journey of the Universe, by Mary Evelyn Tucker and Brian Swimme, and how that film acted as a catalyst for the libretto that accompanies your oratorio.

Paula | Well, I can start that. When we met Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim in June of 2011, we were already working with Cami Davis. All three of us were working together on a piece that was Earth-based at that point. We had the concept of an oratorio, a libretto and we were working toward it. There was a little bit of music written, just the beginning of things. When we met Mary Evelyn and John—they came to dinner at our house—and it was like a lightning bolt quite frankly. We saw the film, and thought “What other story is there to tell? I mean this is THE story.” We worked with Mary Evelyn, John, and Brian Swimme to vet the libretto. They have been tremendous supporters of this work. There’s a deep connection there.

Sam | Yes, the way the chapters are arranged in the book and in the film—the sequences of scenes in the Journey of the Universe documentary—when you have a chance to see it, you will for sure recognize the flow.

Kari | They are some of the giants that you’re standing on the shoulders of.

Sam | Yes, they are. They’re just really remarkable. They started the Forum for Religion and Ecology at Yale. Yale has arguably the best environmental school—the Yale School of Forestry—and the Yale Divinity School is renowned. They have bridged those two things, bringing religion and ecology together. There’s great power and great insight in all of that work.

Kari | In the same vein as the ideas of crossing domains and integrating everything and everybody, you involved children in reading the Lament, and it struck me as a very powerful and very timely addition because we have so many young voices now as leaders of movements. Was the decision to include young voices a deliberate one or was it arbitrary? Do you feel it’s important that they’re included?

Paula | Oh yes, and it was not arbitrary at all. We had this idea to do a narrative of lost species, ecosystem loss, and just loss. We worked first with Amy Seidl (biologist at the University of Vermont), who did the initial writing, and we were searching for a young person to read with her. We settled on her daughter Helen, who auditioned and was just great. So it started off being a mother-daughter conversation first. Then, when we went to Cleveland, we thought, “We don’t have a mother-daughter, but why not two young people?” We had connections to some charter schools in Cleveland. We auditioned a bunch of young people and two of them, Niko and Anaria, did the reading there. 

In Philadelphia, we changed the format again. We thought, “What about having the young person speak to the adult?” We ended up with the narrator—again a young person—with the adult reflecting the species losses back to her. All of these losses—like the 9/11 memorials when they recite all of the names—the naming is so powerful.

Kari | I got the sense that it was very deliberate, but you just highlighted exactly how deliberate, what a process that was, which I think is so beautiful, powerful, and a really great idea.

Paula | Well, it did evolve. Each one is a little different. We tweaked them a little bit, too, by looking at the list of what’s currently endangered or extinct, and asked if there was some new species on the list? There is this huge list you can find online and you can just pull from it and there’s so much to choose from. Those lists are enormous. It’s absolutely terrifying. We share the Lament part—yes, very, very deliberate, evolving and powerful—right in the middle of the oratorio.

 The Cascade – Lament involves children naming endangered and extinct species. This video shows the different ways that children made their statements in each of the three performances.