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EVOLUTIONARY PARABLES are fun, poignant, and values-rich ways of learning the science-based Epic of Evolution
Compiled by Connie Barlow |
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1. "STARTULL: The Story of an Average Yellow Star" - by Connie Barlow
♦ Click for a SCRIPT OF "Startull: The Story of an Average Yellow Star" that UPPER ELEMENTARY and MIDDLE-SCHOOL kids (who can read) can act out with no advance preparation! There are roles for 4 kids. Also great with ADULTS. |
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2. "PLUTO's IDENTITY CRISIS" - by Connie Barlow and Bella Downey
♦ Click for a SCRIPT OF "Pluto's Identity Crisis" that ELEMENTARY and MIDDLE-SCHOOL kids (who can read) can act out with no advance preparation! There are roles for anywhere from 4 to 12 kids.
♦ Click for ADULT and YOUTH versions of the PLUTO Parable
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3. "OZZIE & THE SNORTLEFISH" - by Denny O'Neil
♦ Click here for 2008 science report on one of Ozzie's actual descendants, Tiktaalik.
3 roles: great with ADULTS or KIDS.
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4. "THE LUCKY LITTLE SEAWEED" - by Mark McMenamin
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5. "THE BUDDHA BOWL" - by Paula Hirschboeck
Narrative Version
Script Version
Guidance for incorporating it into a Stardust Ritual
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6. "OF BLACK HOLES AND HOL-I-NESS" - by Paula Hirschboeck
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7. "MENAGERIE OF THE MIND" - by Connie Barlow
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8. "EARTH HAD A CHALLENGING CHILDHOOD" - by Connie Barlow
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9. "WHO AM I?" - by Connie Barlow
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10. "THE DANCE" - by Larry Edwards
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11. "EARTH'S EYES" - by Leslie Pilder
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12. "LAMENT OF THE BLUE-GREEN ALGAE" (poem) - by Neal McBurnett |
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13. "A LONG WINTER" - by Connie Barlow
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14. "A LEAF OF GRASS" - by Connie Barlow
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15. "THE DANCE OF ISLANDS AND CONTINENTS" - by Connie Barlow
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16. "DEATH OF THE DINOSAURS" - by Connie Barlow
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Evolutionary parables being performed by volunteers at Great Story events.
♦ WHAT ARE GREAT STORY PARABLES?
Such parables
are vignettes or episodes of the all-embracing grand story of the Universe,
Earth, and Life. They are vignettes, little stories, each complete and satisfying
in and of itself, intended to instruct and inspire. As with the Arabian Scheherazade
tales (The Thousand and One Nights) and the British cycle of stories
organized around King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the Universe
Story is a story best articulated as a family of subsidiary tales.
♦ WHY DO WE
NEED PARABLES TO TELL THE STORY?
The full sweep
of our cosmic creation story, the Great Story (also known as the Universe
Story or Epic of Evolution), is so overwhelming that few attempts have been
made to tell it in anything less than the length of a book. Examples of short tellings of the whole story available online include The Universe Story by Patricia Gordon. Brian Swimme also tells the story beautifully in a published magazine interview, titled "Comprehensive Compassion". See also Michael Dowd's "The Big Picture".
Perhaps the most
successful and widely known short version of the story is the experiential
"Cosmic Walk" developed by Miriam Therese MacGillis in the
late 1980s and since adapted and used in many forms. Great
Story Beads are a beautiful, accessible, and fun way to enter into the
story, too. The parable form also lends opportunity to bring, what Michael Dowd calls, "night language" into tellings of The Great Story — allegorical modes common to all creation stories.
♦ WHY IMAGINATIVE PARABLES ARE CRUCIAL FOR CHILDREN
Ken Wilber, in his 2006 book Integral Spirituality writes:
♦ WHAT ELSE
CAN PARABLES DO?
Like parables
in the Bible, Great Story parables will help us talk about and foster values
and virtues: life-centered values as well as human-centered values. Parables
also offer distinctive themes that will make it possible to connect the Great
Story with existing holidays, seasonal observances, and rites of passage.
Parables can
serve as "scripture" upon which Great Story talks, sermons, celebrations,
and rituals are based. Finally, parables will make it possible for virtually
any among us to contribute and distribute our creativity in ways that can
make a difference.
It is time for
our community of Great Story enthusiasts to begin offering up parables!
DRAMATIC SCRIPTS FOR ACTING OUT PARABLES
Some evolutionary parables, particularly the playful ones with distinctive characters and dialogue, are fun and meaningful to act out in workshops and other group contexts. "The Lucky Little Seaweed" and "Ozzie and the Snortlefish" have been adapted for such use. PDF versions are available here, and these each present the scripts in 3 parts: two characters plus a narrator. We find it works well to invite 3 volunteers to read the script (or reserve the narrator role for yourself), and two more to act out the two characters. For "Lucky Little Seaweed," for example, in addition to a narrator, there would be a reader and an actor for the part of the Little Seaweed and for the part of Fungus.
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Click here for "The Lucky Little Seaweed" (PDF).
Click here for "Ozzie and the Snortlefish" (PDF).
"In the grand developmental waves available to humans, the archaic, magic, and mythic waves are predominantly the province of the world's great religious and mythic systems. This in itself is not a bad thing; in fact, it is a necessary and absolutely crucial function of the world's great mythologies. Every human is born at square one and begins his or her unfolding from there, moving from archaic to magic to mythic and possibly higher, and if the world's mythologies were not a repository of these early-level beliefs, every human born would have to reinvent them anew." (p. 180)
Ken Wilber is correct, at one level. But he misses entirely at another. The Great Story parables listed above demonstrate why. Take the "Startull" parable, for example. A group of sibling stars all end up talking with one another. No adult would believe this is real. But this might be just the right inflection of personified "magic" for young children in our science-based culture to be fed magical/mythic tales crucial for early childhood developmental stages and which teach not fantasy stories but the real scientific facts and the real values important for living today.
"These great myths, laid down 3000 years ago, could never be created today, not because humanity has no imagination, but because everyone has a video camera. Just let Moses try to claim he parted the Red Sea today and see how far he gets." (p. 192)
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LEFT: volunteers at 2004 Meadville-Lombard Winter Institute performing "Lucky Little Seaweed"
RIGHT: During Evolution Sunday (11 February 2007), member Joyce Wilson and Pastor Pete Terpenning reenact "The Lucky Little Seaweed" at Community United Church of Christ in Boulder, CO.
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Email your parable to: |
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We are looking
for parables that celebrate each of the "major moments of transformation".
We are also looking for parables that depict an emergence or unfolding of
lesser magnitude that nevertheless beautifully, poignantly, or humorously
reveals one or more of the processes by which evolution works. So begin by
taking the opportunity to get thoroughly grounded in the scientific underpinnings
of the episode you choose to work on. And live with that event, until values
and teachings emerge for you.
See if you can tell the tale of a past event in a way that forever transforms the listener's experience of something she or he regularly encounters in today's world, so that future encounters will call up the story and lesson of the parable. Lesson is key: the storyline should be interwoven with values and virtues—ranging from a grounding sense that this is our cosmic home to teachings that promote Earth-friendly attitudes and practices.
Here is our chance to reach out to the wider community of folks who have little science background and no previous contact with our movement. Yet don't be shy about using scientific terms in moderate doses; meaning can well be conveyed in context, and especially through repetition. Parables are our opportunity to celebrate language and urge helpful and evocative terms toward broader use. (Think of all the multi-syllabic technical names of dinosaurs the average ten-year-old can recite.) Those of us who want to write for kids—great! We adults enjoy a children's story well told; it silences the critic in us and thus gives our imagination permission to roam.
There is power in the spoken word. And our culture is hungering for personal contact. So we encourage contributors to write a parable for oral delivery. That means short sentences low on abstraction and high on imagistic detail. No parable should take longer than ten minutes to recite, at a slow, storytelling pace. Each should provide flexible enough content and style to encourage extemporaneous delivery, as well as direct recitation. Dialogue format, as noted above, is ideal for dramatic acting out in a group.
The repetitive use of catch phrases is helpful, too. For example, the parable "Earth Had a Challenging Childhood" repeats such phrases as "The Earth shook like jelly" and "So, what do you think?"
Live with the questions for awhile. Why is this episode inspiring? Why does it allure you? What do you learn from it? In what life situations might you look to the event for assurance or guidance? What does it remind you of? See if a poetic, moving affirmation comes to mind for you to include in the parable: something the reader might take on for themselves in times of need. Consider that you have the possibility of creating a phrase or metaphor so powerful that it will live on long after you are gone.
Write and rewrite, edit and edit and edit. Have your friends make suggestions, too, before you send your script to us. Remember that these are stories: there should be action, tension followed by resolution, perhaps an unexpected twist in plot, memorable characters. Be profound, if you wish, poignant, and by all means playful! As to the values content, stories instruct best if the instruction is subtle, subliminal—and if they entertain.
Let there be nuances and mystery, too, and consider the full range of voices available to you. Most of us easily write as omniscient narrator, but you could also invent and name actual characters to tell the tale for you through dialogue or dramatic monologue. Heroic quest and Kipling-style just-so stories may work well, too. (Consult Eric Schulman's 1999 book, A Briefer History of Time for other style possibilities.) If you find it difficult to get started, just try, "Once upon a time . . ."
Parables that inspire, move, or delight and that further the understanding of the Great Story and its importance will be published on this website, in self-published booklets, and elsewhere.
All parables should be freely and joyously donated. We make them freely available to magazines, and will sell the self-published booklets at a small mark-up over cover. We are committed, first and foremost, to wide distribution of the parables.
Patricia Gordon, professor of literature at John Abbott College in Montreal, Canada is developing a curriculum for having her students write parables. Mark McMenamin, professor of paleontology at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts is inviting his science undergraduates to try their hand at parables writing. The carrot here: some students may produce parables that, when helpfully edited, merit a place on this website and in our published booklets.
There is no single way for any component story to be told, and different writers will emphasize different value connotations. For this reason, just because one parable has already been written for a particular event, it doesn't mean that a dozen more cannot be written too! For example, Paula Hirschboeck wrote her "Buddha Bowl" parable to celebrate the creation of elements in the bellies of ancient stars, and used an enigmatic Zen koan format in doing so. Later, Connie Barlow wrote of the same event, taking on the voice of Walt Whitman as narrator.
Once you submit your parable for publication, expect to watch others evolve it! We hope readers will feel free to modify these stories and carry them into the world for their own particular uses and for different audiences. Ideally, some readers will take orality to the next level; instead of reciting your parable exactly as you wrote it, they will deliver the gist of it extemporaneously.
Your best chance of getting your parable published by us is to make it well on the short side of ten minutes. Our intent is to eventually manifest a website on which all contributions can be accessed.
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Email your parable to: |
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Scroll back to TOP for the parables that have already been written.
Ideas for Future Parables: Here are some title possibilities for future parables:
Omnicentric Universe
Galaxies Galore Sacrifice of the Supernovas Cosmic Alchemy The Story of Calcium Cosmic Catastrophes as Opportunities First Life The Age of Bacteria The Oxygen Crisis—or Opportunity? Celebrating the Cambrian Death of the Dinosaurs The Reptiles Who Ruled the Seas Generosity of the sun In Praise of Worms The Adventure of Weather and Gravity
(coming out onto land)
Heoroes by Happenstance
(The Tale of Ichthyostega)We Are Water Creatures Ancestors All the Way Down Breakup of Pangaea The Legacy of Gondwanaland When the Isthmus of Panama Arose Creative Tinkering Keeping the Memory Alive The Old Ones Standing on the Shoulders of Giants Majestic Mergers Lichen, Lichen, Everywhere It Takes a Universe to Make a Child Ice Time The Story of Soil The Dance of Islands and Continents Earth Blooms A Fruitful Longing Garden of Ediacara Hypersea The Emerging Ecozoic Convergence Earth Learns to Fly An Immense Journey Return to the Sea The Story of Ginkgo Trees Who Knew the Dinosaurs How Honey Locust Got Her Honey How Hawthorns Got their Thorns Honoring the Elders When Grasses Graced Earth Our Magnificent Moon Cataclysms Galore Of Horsetails and Ferns The Wonders of Wood
Of course, you can also pick any one of the transformational moments mentioned in the Great Story Beads Timeline and write a parable about that event. The possibilities are endless!