Family Life -
Books
Mother, son co-write creation tale
By SHARON ABERCROMBIE
Usually, when kids are sick and have to stay home from school,
they watch TV. Or maybe read books.
Not Morgan Martindell. When this 11-year-old recently came down
with Lyme disease, he spent the week helping his mother, Jennifer Morgan, write
her new book. Correction -- their new book. For the past several years, Morgan
and Jennifer have been collaborating on a children’s version of the story
of our universe. Morgan has served as his mom’s co-author and official
pre-publication editorial advisor.
Born With a Bang: The Universe Tells Our Cosmic Story, the
first of their planned three-part series, was published last spring by Dawn
Publications, a small Nevada City, Calif., company. Based on the 1992 book,
The Universe Story, co-authored by Passionist Fr. Thomas Berry,
environmentalist and cultural historian, and Brian Swimme, mathematical
cosmologist, Born With a Bang has sold 6,000 copies since last April. It
is written from the perspective of the Universe, as if she were telling the 13-
billion-year creation story to her 21st century children.
In October, Learning Magazine gave the book one of its 10
Teachers’ Choice Awards of the year. There were over 400 submissions vying
for the recognition.
As the environmentally savvy might be wont to say, Jennifer and
Morgan’s unique parent-child literary effort has been “an organic
process,” fueled by a time-honored family tradition known as the nightly
bedtime story. When Morgan was 6, he and his mom would become storybook
characters. According to the dictates of whatever narrative they were reading,
they would live “as happily as they could be, as angry as they could
be.” They had great fun embodying the roar of a ferocious tiger and
wriggling sideways into the shell and brain of a little green turtle.
As they were to discover a few years later, these bedtime story
sessions were getting them into practice for the telling of what some folks
consider to be the most awesomely adventuresome yarn of them all -- the
creation of our universe.
Born With a Bang originally began as a seminar assignment
for Jennifer Morgan. In 1996, the Princeton, N.J., resident wanted to change
directions. After eight years as director of the Northeast Organic Farming
Association, “I needed to go on an interior journey,” she explained.
So she turned her focus to Genesis Farm’s three-month Earth Literacy
program.
A five-minute version
At Genesis Farm, Caldwell Dominican Sr. Miriam MacGillis, founding
director, customarily assigns her students to tell his or her own personalized
five-minute version of the universe story. They have a week to prepare. Recalls
Jennifer Morgan: “I wanted to do something more than an intellectual
expression. I wanted to feel it on a cellular level.”
Seemingly disparate parts of her life clamored to get in on the
act: those storytelling sessions with Morgan; her Catholicism, which she had
embraced at the age of 21. “I was always captivated by God in the Hebrew
Scriptures as the ‘I Am,’ ” said Jennifer Morgan, who has a
theology degree from the University of San Francisco.
Like a caravan going backwards into time, “I Am”
flip-flopped into a playful embodiment of the universe. Jennifer Morgan
reminisces how, as once a tiny kid herself, Mother Universe suddenly realized
she could be all the things in her dreams: “A giant star, a blade of
grass, a lion’s roar, a kitten’s purr.”
“The Universe reflected, ‘I am the Universe. You were
inside me from the very beginning, but not in your human form. Like you, I
started as a tiny speck. About 13 billion years ago, or so, I was smaller than
a piece of dust under your bed. And if you ask me where I came from, I would
tell you I don’t know. It’s the greatest of all mysteries. But there
I was.’ ”
Jennifer Morgan had great fun creating her story. She, of course,
tried it out on Morgan for his reactions. He told her what he thought was
clear, not so clear, or boring, or exciting.
But alas, when one is re-imagining the enchantment of creation
unfolding, the creator can sometimes be oblivious to such practicalities as
stage fright. Until the moment of performance, that is. Then it hits. Remembers
Jennifer Morgan: “I was quivering like a leaf when I got up to tell the
story. Then, afterward, when I sat down, there was this silence in the room. I
just knew everybody hated it.”
Finally, “after what seemed like a 13-billion year pause,
their feedback suddenly flared forth,” she said, “in a starburst of
affirmations. ‘You need to write this story down for children,’
” the majority of Jennifer’s colleagues kept saying.
Buoyed by their encouragement, Jennifer Morgan decided she would
indeed begin to adapt Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry’s Universe
Story for children. But how could she afford to take time out to write?
Just months before, Jennifer Morgan had become a single parent.
She and Morgan were living on a shoestring. Then a chance conversation with a
friend, an East Indian cop in Princeton, changed her circumstances for the
better. The officer told her about a fellow countryman, Rajiv Malhotra, who had
started a foundation to help support projects that blended science and
spirituality. When Jennifer Morgan applied to Malhotra’s Infinity
Foundation, she received $25,000 -- enough to keep her and her son afloat while
she finished the first installment of the book. Infinity has since given her
another grant so she could complete the second installment, which went to the
printer in October.
As any author knows, getting a manuscript off to one’s editor
elicits a large sigh of relief. Make that doubles for Morgan and Jennifer. They
worked hard.
During Morgan’s recovery, “he pointed out spots that
were confusing and was sure to tell me at times, ‘Mom, that part is really
flat.’ I told him that the Lyme spirochetes were in league with me. They
kept him home so he could work on the book. His input made a crucial
difference.” Jennifer Morgan said that she does the science research,
writes the first draft, and then reads it to her son. “Knowing I will read
it to him, and actually do read it, makes the writing process much more
engaging for me. And, of course, the final story is much better.”
People didn’t invent love
During the writing of both books, Jennifer Morgan would also try
it out on her son’s friend, Soren Rasmussen. Sometimes, the eager editors
had more energy than she did. Jennifer recalls the afternoon when she was all
tired out. “I asked them if we could stop and they both said, ‘No,
let’s keep working.’ ”
Early in the process, Jennifer Morgan began taking the book to
Morgan’s school for even more critiquing. “I’ve loved hearing
what they have had to say. It’s as if the Universe is writing the book
through the very dialogue between all of us. There’s something magical in
this way of working. It’s such a pleasure. I can’t imagine doing it
any other way.”
Listening to these kids’ comments, it is easy to understand
why. On one occasion Jennifer Morgan wondered how they would react to “the
dark side” of the universe -- to the many deaths that were necessary to
further the evolutionary process. Of particular concern to her, was the death
of “Mother Star, who had lived long before your Sun was born and was much
much bigger than our Sun would be. Inside her enormous blazing belly, she did
something incredible! Your Mother Star mixed together bunches of hydrogen and
baked them at three billion degrees into lots of different new elements of
building blocks. But before your own star could be born, the one you call the
Sun, your Mother Star had to die. She ripped herself apart in a massive
explosion, a supernova, giving birth to your Sun.”
Jennifer Morgan knew this process was the original example of
death and resurrection, but could kids accept a concept that is a difficult
struggle, a leap of faith, for most adults?
She held her breath when one eight-year old girl sighed, “Oh,
that’s so sad.” “Well, should I take it out?” asked
Jennifer. “Oh, no, it gives us a chance to cry,” the child
replied.
“There are times when we don’t need to shield our
children,” Jennifer Morgan realized. To expose them to deeper truths
elicits wisdom, she reflected.
Nine-year old Kate Alexander told Jennifer Morgan, “I like
the way Mother Star knitted together calcium and how that’s related to
people. I like the way the story says that love was there from the very
beginning … if love was going to come into existence in the beginning. I
know people didn’t invent love. It’s not something people could
invent.”
Hannah Wilson, 10, declared she had never read a book “like
this before. Sometimes I don’t like science because you don’t get
that the universe is alive, but it really is. … I like the mixture of
science and myth. If a story is all science, it’s boring. If a story is
all myths, it’s boring. I like the part about the Sun loving its planets.
Usually, we don’t think of the Sun as a being. We take it for granted. But
if the Sun loves its planets it must be alive.”
Brad Wilson, 8, likes “the way the universe tells the story
and says, ‘You were part of your mom. You were always part of me [the
universe] and you will always be part of me.’ ”
Morgan Martindell, co-author, wanted to talk about a particular
mom -- his own. In his own words, he once told Jennifer, “Mom, you really
spoil me. The teachers in school don’t teach science and religion the way
you do. You mix everything together. They keep everything separate. I like the
way you teach me.”
On another occasion, he said, “Mom this is awesome. You are
pretty cool.”
“Why?” asked Jennifer Morgan.
“Because you’re not as bonded to being an adult as most
parents are.”
When you are writing a kid’s book, that’s pretty awesome
feedback.
Many adults are likewise grateful that Jennifer Morgan can
frequently forget about being grown up. Several sisters’ congregations are
using the book in their rituals. One person has reported to Jennifer that
Born With a Bang is also being used for retreats. The retreatants are
asked to read a section and reflect on those themes in their own lives.
Sr. Gail Worcelo, who is part of a community creating the Green
Mountain Environmental Monastery in Vermont, told Jennifer, “with tears in
her eyes, that when her mother read the book, she finally understood her
daughter’s lifework.”
Sharon Abercrombie is the assistant editor of EarthLight
Magazine, a quarterly journal of ecological spirituality published in
Oakland, Calif. Alas, she does not have her own copy of Born With a
Bang, She keeps buying the book and giving it to friends.
National Catholic Reporter, November 15,
2002
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