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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Rome:20260902T180000
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SUMMARY:Creation and Life Itself
DESCRIPTION:Science\, Art and the Sacred Series \n\n\n\nCreation and Life Itself \n\n\n\nSeptember 2\, 3 and 4\, 2026 \n\n\n\nSpeakers: Lauren Cole\, Nicholas Colloff\, Isabel Hawkins\, Angie Hobbs\, Peter Reason\, Shelly ValdezCurated and Chaired by: John Pickering \n\n\n\n9:00am PDT  | 12:00pm EDT  | 5:00pm BST  |  6:00pm CEST3-hour live sessions9 hours of live presentations\, discussions\, questions and answers.This event is LIVE online. All registered participants will receive the recording. \n\n\n\nTicket Prices:75.00 euros; 40 euros Solidarity ticket for those in financial difficulty. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nProgram\n\n\n\nWednesday September 2The Pregnant Philosopher with Angie Hobbs Medieval Women Mystics: Authority and Suppression with Lauren Cole \n\n\n\nThursday September 3AKANAL Indigenous Cultural Exchange: A Catalyst for the Creative Process with Isabel Hawkins and Shelly Valdez \n\n\n\nFriday September 4One Foot in Eden: Paradise Lost and Found with Nicholas ColloffWill there be singing? What can poetry say at a time of catastrophe? with Peter Reason \n\n\n\nAbout the Event \n\n\n\nAt its best\, being ‘human’ means being creative. Here\, ‘creative’ means more than just poetic language or beautiful images. It speaks to something primordial in nature\, since life itself is creation. Our meeting will look at the complementary ways in which science\, the humanities and spiritual traditions recognise this and how that might inform the lives we lead\, singly or collectively. \n\n\n\nAll human cultures have Creation stories. They reflect our wonder at life itself and the enchanting diversity of Creation that it brings forth. To tell and re-tell the stories is part of being human. \n\n\n\nScience is sometimes accused of disenchanting Creation; in fact\, it has enhanced it\, since the wonder remains. Scientists like David Attenborough express as much love for living things as poets or mystics have done down the ages and as people living in animistic cultures do now. \n\n\n\nAnimistic Creation stories are of a transformative relation between beings of all kinds that continually and reciprocally bring one another into existence. So\, in that view\, simply living and being human is to be creative\, where ‘creative’ means more than just making poetic language or beautiful images.  \n\n\n\nLuckily\, we live in a time when science\, the humanities and the arts are becoming more open\, in complementary ways\, to recognising this. Our meeting will look at how that might inform the lives we lead\, singly or collectively. \n\n\n\nWe will investigate what ‘being human’ and ‘being creative’ might have meant in the past\, what it means in our time. We will look at creativity in science\, in the arts and humanities and in spiritual traditions\, paying particular attention to women’s voices\, those heard and those not. We will\, for example\, hear from speakers on Hildegarde of Bingen and Julian of Norwich\, as well mystical traditions from South American cultures. \n\n\n\nBeing human\, all too human\, is difficult. Being more than human\, particularly so. Creativity in some sense extends\, even transcends the human condition\, and we will explore what philosophy and the humanities have to say about that. \n\n\n\nNow is a particularly appropriate time to do it\, as both creativity and what it is to be human are brought into question by the rise of the machine. \n\n\n\nPlease contact Eleanor if you would like more information about this event at: eleanor@paricenter.com \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeakers and sessions\n\n\n\nClick on a title to expand \n\n\n\n\n\nFinding Meaning with Medieval Women Mysticswith Lauren Cole\n\n\n\n\nIt may seem on the surface that our modern secular society has little in common with the stringent religious culture of medieval Europe. As the story goes\, we have moved from a “Dark Age” of superstition to an enlightened age of reason. But look a little closer\, and we find that in trying to make sense of the world\, we inevitably fall back on the same tools. \n\n\n\nIn this session\, we examine these sense-making tools in the writings of medieval women mystics and their counterparts today. The writings of mystics such as Hildegard von Bingen\, Julian of Norwich\, Catherine of Siena\, and Mechthild of Magdeburg provide us with frameworks for environmentalism\, feminist thought\, and natural medicine today. Parallels we will explore include Hildegard von Bingen’s lapidary and today’s crystal healing\, beguines’ practices of care and today’s care homes\, and mystical astrology and today’s horoscopes. Ultimately\, this session will consider what we have already learned from medieval women mystics\, and what we can continue to learn. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLauren Cole is a PhD History Candidate and Presidential Fellow at Northwestern University. Her research centres on medieval mystics\, medicine\, and manuscripts in Europe\, with a particular focus on Hildegard von Bingen. Lauren is also a public historian\, creating videos on medieval history for over 95’000 followers on her Instagram and TikTok accounts (@MedievalLauren). Lauren splits her time between London\, Mainz\, and Chicago. You can find more on her website: https://medievallauren.wordpress.com \n\n\n\n\n\n\nSeeing with the Eye of the Heartwith Nicholas Colloff\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBoth the painter\, Cecil Collins\, and the poet\, Edwin Muir\, enjoyed paradisial childhoods\, which\, though rudely interrupted\, provided a sustaining sense of innocence and wonder through which they subsequently beheld the world and wove artistic practices that sought to widen and deepen consciousness into a ‘second\, renewing innocence’ that was a paradise regained\, which Collins referred to as the “great happiness”. \n\n\n\nThey both employed artistic\, spiritual practices that deepened attention\, reverenced\, and used dreams and other imaginal states\, and cultivated good memory to develop works of great originality and of gently transforming power that they felt could take people on a pilgrimage to their originating light\, where “that strange quarry you scarcely thought you sought” would reveal itself and you would find  “Yourself\, the gatherer gathered\, the finder found.”   \n\n\n\nBoth worked\, broadly\, within the ‘Western tradition’\, but with an openness to the Spirit that bloweth where it will\, and both were sustained\, nurtured\, and challenged in their long\, loving marriages to Elizabeth Collins and Willa Muir\, both themselves artists. Both in their practices and their work\, they have much to inspire us about the potential for a creative\, spiritual life. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNicholas Colloff\, when not posting art on Facebook or walking through the woods\, is the Director of the Argidius Foundation\, a Swiss family foundation that helps develop social and environmental enterprises\, principally in Africa and Latin America. He studied theology\, philosophy\, and the psychology of religion at university\, after which he helped found the Prison Phoenix Trust that teaches meditation and yoga to people in prison\, and from this discovered a gift for starting things (and leaving them in better hands so that they flourished).  \n\n\n\nThis has included a microfinance bank in the Balkans\, a charity focused on community mental health in poor communities in the Global South\, and a social investment fund. Through the auspices of Temenos and the friendship of the poet and Blake scholar\, Kathleen Raine\, he was privileged to meet and know Cecil Collins in the latter years of his life\, and through Kathleen to know one of Edwin and Willa Muir’s closest friends. \n\n\n\n\n\n\nPlato and the Pregnant Philosopherwith Angie Hobbs\n\n\n\n\nPlato stimulates creative thought in a variety of ways\, all aimed at stimulating our non-rational as well as our rational faculties. In order to explore fundamental ethical questions about how to live and what sort of person to be\, he creates dialogues involving a vibrant cast of characters (never himself)\, and the conversations invite us to see the connections between belief\, character and life. We are enabled to form a sense of the shape\, structure and narrative of a life — both models to emulate and models to avoid. The dialogues often deploy vivid imagery — such as the Allegory of the Cave in the Republic — and in much of this imagery Plato plays with gender expectations\, such as the pregnant philosopher (male as well as female) in the Symposium and philosophical statecraft as the art of weaving in the Statesman. In several dialogues imaginary utopias also encourage us to envisage different ways of thinking\, living and being. It is intriguing how often this agent-centred\, dialogic approach\, which embeds individuals in their social contexts\, has appealed to women philosophers\, particularly during the last 70 years\, and this is a topic we shall explore. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAngie Hobbs is Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Sheffield. She gained a degree in Classics (First Class) and a PhD in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge\, and her chief interests are in ancient philosophy and literature\, and ethics and political theory from classical thought to the present\, and she has published widely in these areas\, including Plato and the Hero; Why Plato Matters Now was published by Bloomsbury in 2025.  She contributes regularly to TV\, radio\, podcasts and other media around the world\, including 27 appearances on In Our Time on Radio 4.  She works in a number of policy sectors\, including the U.K. Civil Service\, National Health Service and Health Research Authority. She has spoken at the World Economic Forum at Davos\, the Athens Democracy Forum\, the Symi Symposium\, the Houses of Parliament\, the Scottish Parliament and Westminster Abbey\, and been the guest on Desert Island Discs and Private Passions. She was a judge of the Man Booker International Prize 2019 and was on the World Economic Forum Global Future Council 2018-9 for Values\, Ethics and Innovation.
URL:https://paricenter.com/event/creation-and-life-itself/
LOCATION:Online
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