HEALING THE DIVIDE BETWEEN RURAL AND URBAN COMMUNITIES
Adrian Stillman*
A morning in 2008 I was awakened in St. Louis by aftershocks from an earthquake in New Madrid, Missouri. I see and recognize how this has been a pathway to my journey into living in the Ecozoic Age.
Today there are two areas in Missouri that have ambient air quality below federal standards. There is a monitoring station a few blocks away from my parish in the Hyde Park neighborhood of North St. Louis, and the other is in New Madrid, Missouri. Now, I am moved to act as I have been presented with these facts as I completed listening to Cosmogenesis by Brian Thomas Swimme.
Cosmogenesis was presented to me in audio as I drove my old truck in between the urban core of St. Louis and the rural area in Jefferson County, Missouri, where I serve as caretaker of Springs Ecozoic Center (www.springsecozoiccenter.com). The clarity that I received as I listened to the book let me know what is mine to do, my vocation. I am to help build unity in politics between urban and rural communities within the context of the world church, however that may manifest itself. The gift of Cosmogenesis is seeing and recognizing that what is in the author, is in me too.
Father Thomas Berry let us know the future of reinventing ourselves includes politics that heal the divide in rural and urban communities. Cosmogenesis helped give me the courage to let any distance between my outer (professional) life and inner (personal) life steadily vanish. I want to share these vibrations through the Earth.
* Adrian Stillman was born at Beaufort Naval Hospital in 1974 to then retiring Marine S.Sgt. Charles F. Stillman and homemaker Rita (Csiky) Stillman. His mother emigrated to the United States through Ellis Island with her Hungarian (Danube Swabian) parents from Romania at the end of World War II. His father was from a sharecropper family of East Prairie, Missouri. Adrian has over twenty years’ experience in financial services and investment management. He earned an undergraduate degree in business economics at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and a graduate degree in investment management and financial analysis from Creighton University. In addition to his work as a Certified Financial Advisor, he currently serves as caretaker of Springs Ecozoic Center in House Springs, Missouri.