We are Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow, full-time itinerant evolutionary evangelists. Since April 2002 we have traveled North America non-stop, sharing in religiously inspiring ways the 14 billion year history of the Universe given by mainstream science. Some of you know us from one of our presentations or workshops. Others we’ve met thanks to my new book Thank GOD for EVOLUTION. To All, it's been an honor and a privilege to meet and become part of so many of your lives over the past six and a half years on the road.

This newsletter will now be our main means of communicating with the millions in the middle who, like us, find inspiration, comfort, and encouragement in our common creation myth—The Great Story of cosmos, Earth, life, and humanity told in meaningful and empowering ways. Here you will find key links to informative blog posts, news coverage, our itinerary, mention of what’s new on our websites, and suggestions for how you can join us and play an important part in furthering this movement.

OUR TWO-FOLD VISION: (1) By 2050, we see the majority of religious and non-religious people worldwide joyfully embracing an evolutionary, ecological worldview. (2) We also imagine, by mid-century, that humanity, in symbiotic partnership with our technologies and social structures, will have largely transitioned to a mutually enhancing relationship with the larger body of life of which we are part.

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Tom Atlee is founder, co-director, and research director of the non-profit Co-Intelligence Institute. From the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s, his work focused on developing a society's capacity to function as a wise democracy. Since 2005, his work has increasingly focused on the dynamics of conscious evolution -- in particular the conscious evolution of social systems. These intertwined undertakings are motivated by a desire to turn our social and environmental challenges into positive developments for our society.

Tom's social change vision is based on new understandings of wholeness which recognize the value of diversity, unity, relationship, context, uniqueness and the spirit inside each of us and the world. Co-intelligence is a form of intelligence grounded in that kind of wholeness. It has collaborative and collective dimensions, which we see clearly in higher forms of politics and governance. Co-intelligence theory also acknowledges many facets of intelligence (like head and heart), wisdom, and the higher forms of intelligence (natural and sacred) that move through and beyond us. Although Tom and the Institute focus on very practical issues of group, social and political dynamics, co-intelligence has many esoteric dimensions as well.

His work in conscious evolution has unfolded in close partnership with Peggy Holman, lead editor of The Change Handbook, and Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution! Tom collaborated with them on both books, on organizing a series of "evolutionary salons" and, along with Susan Cannon, on organizing a new nonprofit, Evolutionary Life. With Peggy he has undertaken intensive research on evolutionary dynamics that can guide the transformation of social systems (one key paper is here, others are here) and envisioning and building a movement for the conscious evolution of social systems. He is lead editor of the Evolutionary Life newsletter.
» Visit The Co-Intelligence Institute

Corey W. deVos is the Writer, Content Producer, and Webmaster of Integral Life and Integral Naked, as well as Managing Editor of KenWilber.com.  He has worked for Integral Institute/Integral Life since Spring of 2003, and has been a student of integral theory and practice for over twelve years.  He has an almost neurotic obsession with language, music, technology, pop culture, and theories of everything, and can often be found beneath a heavy set of headphones crafting trans-genre hip hop beats for the Rocky Mountain Integral scene, under the nom de guerre "dj rekluse."  Corey currently lives in Denver, CO, where he hopes to one day begin working on the Great American Integral Psi-Fi Novel for the Post-Postmodern World.

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Cheryl Genet completed both a master’s and a doctoral degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Science and Theology. She is an adjunct professor of philosophy at Cuesta College. As the director of the Orion Institute’s Science and the Human Spirit program she has done work in the area of emerging scientific paradigms, cosmological stories, interfaith relations, and understanding the implications of our emerging world community. Cheryl is the Managing Editor of the Collins Foundation Press which specializes in publishing edited collections from Cheryl and Russell Genet’s “Humanity Participants’ Conference Series.” She is a co-editor of the recently published Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques, the first in the conference series proceedings, and the managing editor of The Evolutionary Epic: Science’s Story and Humanity’s Response, the second in the series, just released. She also serves as facilitator of the Collins Family Foundation’s Profitable Sustainability project.

Joshua Gorman is the founding director of Generation Waking Up, an emerging non-profit organization working to catalyze twenty-first century youth movements and to help young people change the world.  He is a co-founder of Global Passageways, a collaborative network of individuals and organizations working in the fields of contemporaray rites of passage, youth mentoring, eldering, and intergenerational collaboration.  Joshua studied 'Global Youth and Social Change' at George Mason University.  He is currently writing a book entitled Generation Waking Up: Coming of Age in the 21st century.

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Jon Cleland Host has a Ph.D. in materials science from Northwestern University and has taught chemistry, physics and biology as an adjunct Professor at Saginaw Valley State University, while being a research scientist in the semiconductor/solar panel field with several patents and peer-reviewed publications.  His involvement in so many diverse scientific fields is both a cause and a result of his view that science is not a collection of separate, unrelated fields of study, but rather is simply the study of our awesome universe, an interconnected whole.  He sees the Great Story as centrally important in both unifying science as well as supplying real sources of meaning, purpose, and morality as our society moves into the 21st century.  As a father of three, much of his energy is focused on bringing a science based, spiritually uplifting culture into being, both for his own family and for the wider community of Earth.  This has resulted in a range of activities in support of the Great Story movement, his UU fellowship, science education, and most importantly, his family culture.   

Jennifer's work as a storyteller, author, educator and environmental advocate flows out of her love of the natural world and cosmology. As former director of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey, she started local and national programs for farmers and consumers. In 1996, she took the Earth Literacy program in cosmology and evolution at Genesis Farm, Blairstown, NJ. It so inspired her that she went on to take classes in cosmology and evolution at Princeton University. In sharing what she learned with her six year old son, she discovered that children are intensely interested in the story of the universe. He wanted to know more and more, even the texture of the edge of the Universe. Jennifer consulted with numerous physicists, biologists and anthropologists regarding science concepts and, over time, bedtime conversations with her son turned into books. "Science is handing us an origin story," she says, "and we've only barely begun to understand its mythic dimensions." She believes that cosmology stories profoundly shape our relationships, work, play, culture, and institutions. Her first book won Learning Magazine's Teachers Choice Award and both books received the highest review ratings from AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science).

» Visit UniverseStories.com

Michael Zimmerman is Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of Biology at Butler University. He received his Ph.D. in Ecology from Washington University in St. Louis (1979) after earning an A.B. degree in Geography from the University of Chicago (1974). As an ecologist, Zimmerman focuses on plant-animal interactions, particularly those associated with pollination. His field work in montane Colorado and Australian heathland has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the United States Department of Agriculture and the American Philosophical Society, among others.

Zimmerman also has a professional interest in science literacy in general and the evolution-creation controversy in particular. He has conducted survey research of various groups (college students, high school teachers, school board presidents, managing editors of newspapers and elected officials) to determine how widespread the acceptance of pseudoscience actually is. As a newspaper columnist specializing on scientific and environmental issues, Zimmerman's work (some of which is syndicated through the Los Angeles Times Syndicate) has appeared regularly on the op-ed pages of many newspapers nationwide. His book reviews on similar topics frequently appear in the Publishers Weekly and the Indianapolis Star. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also past editor of the Newsletter of the Ohio Center for Science Education. Finally, he is the founder of The Clergy Letter Project, an organization designed to demonstrate that religion and science are compatible.

His book entitled Science, Nonscience, and Nonsense: Approaching Environmental Literacy was published in September, 1995 by Johns Hopkins University Press. A paperback version was released in October, 1997.