Sacred Universe Award 2025

Celebrate 25 Years of Shining Our Light Through the Universe

The Well is excited to host a star-studded event on its 25th anniversary. Join Sr. Gail Worcelo, Dr. Brian Swimme, and Dr. Louis Savary, recipient of the 2025 Sacred Universe Award, for a day of inspiration and connection. This prestigious award, first presented to Thomas Berry in 1993, honors individuals whose work fosters a deeper, mutually-enhancing relationship between humanity and the Earth.

Be part of this transformative event—register now to celebrate a legacy of brilliance, wisdom, and vision that continues to illuminate our path forward!

Sr. Gail Worcelo: How High is the Sky? A Celebration of Women Who Have Shaped Our Galactic Consciousness

Dr. Brian Swimme: Cosmic Spirituality in an Expanding Universe
The great discovery of four centuries of modern science is the cosmic creativity that constructed two trillion galaxies out of the primordial elementary particles that emerged fourteen billion years ago. The great challenge of the present moment is to articulate the ways in which this new cosmology resonates with the essential core of our wisdom traditions. We are more than democrats and republicans, more than Americans and Chinese, more than Christians and Muslims. We are all cosmological beings with a destiny that is tied to this cosmic creativity.

Format: Zoom & In-Person | Lunch Included for In-Person Attendees | Louis Savary, Gail Worcelo, Brian Swimme will be on Zoom

 

Louis M. Savary, PhD, STD, who had been a Jesuit for 30 years, has been studying the life and writings of Teilhard de Chardin for over 50 years. He has written a dozen books clarifying Teilhard’s often difficult and complex ideas and insights for ordinary readers. He provided easy access to Teilhard’s two complete books in The Divine Milieu Explained and The Human Phenomenon Explained. In The New Spiritual Exercises, he re-envisioned the Ignatian spiritual classic from Teilhard’s evolutionary perspective. He has written books on Teilhard’s evolutionary understanding of themes such as suffering, morality, and love. His most recent books exploring Teilhard’s ideas are The Christian Phenomenon: A Once and Future Church and 100 Questions on Catholicism and Evolution. He is currently at work on a full-length book on the cardisphere, parts of which he shares with us in this lecture, as he accepts the Sacred Universe Award.

Sr. Gail Worcelo is a co- founder with the late Passionist priest and cultural historian Thomas Berry, of Sisters of the Earth Community. (SEC) Co-Founded in 1999,  SEC is the first community of Catholic sisters worldwide founded specifically for the healing and protection of Earth and its life systems within the Ecozoic era. Gail began her studies with Thomas in 1983 during her novitiate with the Passionist nuns of St Gabriel’s monastery and continued study until his passing in 2009. In 1994 , Gail was a founding member of the network:  Sisters of Earth (which just celebrated its 30th anniversary. )  This historic gathering mobilized Catholic sisters and women worldwide to take seriously our responsibility for the fate of Earth. Gail is the editor of the recently released book entitled: Shamanic Journey to Earth’s Wisdom: Reflections on the Cosmovision of Thomas Berry, which shares reflections on the theme of the 2022 Sisters of Earth conference. Since 1994 Gail has been leading retreats, conferences and programs around the world on topics such as:  Living in a Multispecies World,  The Spirituality of the Fireball,  Galactic Theology and the Deep Interior, and the Mysticism of Thomas Berry. For the past nine years, Gail has co-led Continual Blossoming in the Via Collectiva;  an emergent path of feminine wisdom in a shared field of awakening with women from around the world. Gail is a liturgical dancer and has Master Degrees in Clinical Psychology from Marywood University and Christian Spirituality from Fordham University.

Brian Thomas Swimme is Professor Emeritus of Cosmology at the California Institute of Integral Studies and Director of the Third Story of the Universe at Human Energy, a public benefit non-profit that focuses on scientific and interdisciplinary research on the future of human collective consciousness. Swimme did his doctoral work in gravitational dynamics at the University of Oregon. He is the host of the Emmy-award-winning PBS special “Journey of the Universe,” written with Mary Evelyn Tucker (www.journeyoftheuniverse.org). His most recent media work is the 35-part video series “The Story of the Noosphere,” created with Devin O’Dea and Monica DeRaspe-Bolles (humanenergy.io). Swimme’s Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe is an early example of the autocosmology genre combining contemporary science and cosmological phenomenology (starborne.substack.com). His recent book, written with Monica DeRaspe-Bolles, illustrated by Sebastian Swimme, and commissioned by Human Energy, is the companion to the series with the same title, The Story of the Noosphere.