Narrative and the critical task of spirituality. An investigation of The Universe Story.

Thomas Berry wrote that ‘it is all a question of story’. We are in trouble he laments because we do not have ‘a good story’. The old story of “how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective” and so, he argues, we need a new story that will provide the context “in which life [can] function in a meaningful manner.” French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, makes the claim that “life can be understood only through the stories that we tell about it’ - if that is the case – ‘then an examined life, in the sense of the word as we have borrowed it from Socrates, is a life recounted.” This is achieved by the unity provided by narrative and the way in which it can hold together seemingly dichotomous events and concepts. Both thinkers’ commitment to narrative is striking, although from different approaches. Ricoeur analysed the function and purpose of narrative while Berry accepted the power of narrative unquestioningly and used it to propose a new human understanding within an evolving cosmos. The first articulation of this ‘New Story’ in its stand-alone version was developed by Berry and mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme in The Universe Story in 1992. It recounts the scientific development of the universe in a narrative, mythical style. If, as Eaton argues the cultural narrative of the West was one of ‘disenchantment’, then Berry and Swimme’s ‘Universe Story’ is a counter narrative which integrates the natural world with a spiritual vision and offers a revitalised cultural narrative within a physical cosmological framework. This paper will examine the role that narrative plays in the development of subjectivity with a specific focus on the critical implications of The Universe Story for our spirituality, and in particular, its contribution towards an ecological consciousness.