About Margaret Swedish....

As an activist with 25 years of experience doing program work for a small non-profit on issues of human rights, economic justice, and US foreign policy (based in Washington DC), Margaret Swedish seeks to bring her experience now to the challenges posed by the looming ecological crisis. That experience includes writing and editing a small journal on issues related to Central America and the US-Mexican border, and many speaking engagements and workshops throughout those years. Her project, Spirituality and Ecological Hope, is centered on bringing an awareness of the true nature of the crisis to grassroots communities around the country through presentations, workshops, and her website, and to pose the question of what kind of people we will be here in the US as the world goes through the crisis.

Margaret is the author of Living Beyond the End of the World: A Spirituality of Hope (the basis for her presentation at this Insitute) and Like Grains of Wheat: A Spirituality of Solidarity.

About Michael Morwood....

For 28 years, Michael Morwood as a Sacred Heart priest in Victoria, Australia, was active in adult education. Then he was silenced in February, 1998, by the conservative Archbishop of Melbourne, George Pell. Without the due process of theological investigation, the popular educator was warned by his religious superior not to speak on the topics of Incarnation, Redemption and the Trinity, which had been the core of his 1997 book, Tomorrow's Catholic: Understanding God and Jesus in a New Millenium.

His religious order then sent Morwood to Sydney, only to find that the ban on him was moveable. By episcopal fiat, he found himself virtually unemployable. He resigned from his priesthood of 29 years.

Since that time, Michael Morwood has been busy as a speaker on the international circuit. Tomorrow's Catholic proved to be a popular book in adult faith groups. The author's purpose was fairly basic: "to help Catholics re-image and re-language some of the basics of their faith, including a cohesive religious worldview in harmony with our place in the universe." Morwood is among many contemporary faith animators, well-schooled in theology, who are helping church people to revision their place in a universe whose nature is radically different from that of the authors of the Bible.  We must start, these writers insist, with the new cosmology. Morwood's inspirations are cosmologists like Brian Swimme and theologians such as Thomas Berry.

Since 1998, Morwood has written two more popular books, Is Jesus God (Crossroads, 2001) and Praying the New Story (2004) In the first book, he asks the necessary questions about fall/redemption theology. Did the first humans cause a major disruption in their relationship to God? Did God really want Jesus to die to fix this broken relationship? In what way was Jesus, the itinerant rabbi of the first century, "God?" What can it mean for contemporary Catholics operating out of a brand new cosmic story when the Vatican says that the church is reliant on Jesus being "an innocent lamb meriting life for us by his blood which he freely shed?' The author believes that contemporary theologians are not undermining Christian life and in fact the "good news" can become "better news." For him there are too few places where serious believers can honestly engage the tradition and wrestle with these and other questions.

About Margaret Silf...

Margaret Silf is an ecumenical lay Christian, committed to working across and beyond the denominational divides. For most of her working life she was employed in the computer industry and left paid employment to devote herself to writing and accompanying others on their spiritual journey, especially through retreats and days of reflection. She is the author of a number of books on the spiritual journey for 21st century pilgrims who may or may not identify with institutional religion, and a regular columnist with “America” magazine. She is especially interested in the cosmic dimension of the Christian story and the spiritual evolution of humanity.

Margaret travels extensively within the UK and internationally, including North America, Australia, South Africa and Malaysia to speak at retreats, conferences and workshops. Her books include: ‘Inner Compass’, ‘Wayfaring’, ‘Roots and Wings’, ‘Companions of Christ’, ‘At Sea with God’, ‘Sacred Spaces’, ‘Wise Choices’, ‘The Way of Wisdom’ and, most recently, ‘Compass Points’. She holds a BA degree from the University of London and an MA degree from the University of Keele, and lives in England, where she has one grown daughter and a baby granddaughter.