Feature article on CONNIE BARLOW's work in
June 2008 ORION Magazine"TORREYA STATE PARK perches on the steep, sandy banks of the Apalachicola, where the river twists slowly through the Florida Panhandle toward the Gulf of Mexico. This is one of the most isolated spots in Florida, rich only in plant life and prisons, stupefyingly hot in summer and eerily quiet nearly all year round. Most park visitors are on their way somewhere else, and when Connie Barlow stopped here on a winter day in 1999, she was no exception . . . "
Connie Barlow
CONNIE BARLOW is an acclaimed author of popular science books and articles, and developer of THE GREAT STORY website. Connie's most recent book, The Ghosts of Evolution (Basic Books), was Amazon.com's top-recommended science book for several months in 2001. Her previous books, Green Space, Green Time: The Way of Science (Copernicus Books), Evolution Extended: Biological Debates on the Meaning of Life (MIT Press), and From Gaia to Selfish Genes: Selected Writings in the Life Sciences, all explore the nexus of science, spirit, and meaning.She is founding member and webmaster of Torreya Guardians, an internet community of botanists, naturalists, and others dedicated to ensuring the continuing persistence in the wild of America's most endangered conifer tree: Torreya taxifolia. The June 2008 issue of Orion Magazine included an in-depth article on "assisted migration" for this highly endangered tree, featuring Connie's leadership in this effort. You can read it online: "Taking Wildness in Hand: Rescuing Species".
Connie Barlow, a Unitarian Universalist, is a well-known developer of curricula for children's religious education programs. Since 2002, she and her husband (Rev. Michael Dowd) have lived entirely on the road, as "America's evolutionary evangelists".
Writings by Connie Barlow 
Four BOOKS (above) / Other Writings (below)"Rewilding Megafauna" an Interview with Connie Barlow (on www.actionbioscience.org). 2007
Click for link to interview."12-Part Stardust Curriculum for Children" 2007
80-page PDF of lesson plans for teaching elementary-age children our relationship to stars and the Universe."Startull: The Story of an Average Yellow Star" 2006
PARABLE for The Great Story, written in SCRIPT form for use on this website and by others in the classroom and elsewhere."Even The Heavens Are Not Immortal" 2005
Interview by Craig Hamilton of Connie Barlow in the Fall 2005 issue of What Is Enlightenment? magazine. PDF"Bring Torreya taxifolia North — Now" 2005
Essay co-authored with Paul S. Martin and published in the Winter 2005 issue of Wild Earth) in PDF."Garden of Eden on Your Dinner Plate?", 2004
Essay published in the Spring 2004 issue of EarthLight, in PDF."Forests in Peril: Book Review", 2004
Review of book by Hazel Delcourt, published in Winter 2004 issue of Wild Earth magazine. Full text."Stardust: Toward a New Periodic Table of Elements", revised 2004
Written for this website, and to support the "We Are Made of Stardust" ritual also on this website, this document provides an easy introduction to the broad outlines and fascinating details of how the various chemical elements were created in different kinds of stars. Full text or in PDF."Death As Natural and Generative in the Cosmos", 2004
Text (and chart) used in public presentations to show how, in the last 500 years, discoveries by geographers, geologists, paleontologists, evolutionary biologists, cell biologists, astronomers and astrophysicists have demonstrated that death is not just something that happens to individual plants and animals but also is a natural and creative process affecting mountains, seaways, continents, species, and even stars and galaxies). Full text"Is This Not Divine?", 2004
A fragment of a sermon on religious naturalism, delivered extemporaneously by Connie at Sunday services at Unitarian Universalist churches. Full text."Epic of Evolution Ritual", 2004
Entry written for the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, edited by Bron Taylor, to be published 2005. Full text."Botanical Ghosts of Evolution", 2004
A contributed essay to the 2004 volume, Forest Canopies, edited by Bruce Rinker and Meg Lowman. Based on Connie's 2001 book, The Ghosts of Evolution. Full text."What is Native to the Land?", 2003
Cover story for the Fall 2003 issue of, Earth Matters, newsletter of the Northwest Earth Institute."Let There Be Sight! A Celebration of Convergence in Evolution", 2003
Written for this website, this is an annotated list of a wealth of examples in which Earth has called forth the same form or function in life on multiple occasions. It is intended to provide a sense that evolution is a meaningful process. Full text."An Immense Journey: Religious Naturalism and the Great Story", 2003
Written for this website, this personal essay shows how the Great Story can enrich the experience of religious naturalism. Exemplars of this tradition include Julian Huxley, Aldo Leopold, Loren Eiseley, and Annie Dillard. in PDF or on-screen."Goodbye Eternal Frontier", 2002 (10 pages)
Published in the Summer 2002 issue of Wild Earth magazine, this article is grounded on the 2001 book by Tim Flannery, The Eternal Frontier. It presents the 65 million year deep time story of the North American Continent, questioning what it means to be native to this continent: spiritual implications and practical recommendations for conservation biology. in PDF."Earth's Challenging Childhood" EarthLight, 2002
A playful evolutionary parable written for oral delivery (Spring issue). Connie has performed this parable many times for churches and retreat centers. Full text in PDF. Connie has written other evolutionary parables, available on this website."Anachronistic Fruits and the Ghosts Who Haunt Them", 2001
Based on Connie's 2001 book, The Ghosts of Evolution (Basic Books), this 8-page article (with color illustrations) in Arnoldia 61(2): 14-21, examines the evidence that some fruits native to North America are ecologically out of step with time — that is, they co-evolved to attract seed dispersers who went some 13,000 years ago (notably, mastodons and mammoths). Full text in PDF.Note: A reader inspired by Connie's book has created a marvelous website that, through words and photographs, honors each of some half dozen American fruits that so visibly still "remember" their partners in coevolution. Visit http://hometown.aol.com/darwinpage/ghostsof.htm.
"Ghost Stories From the Ice Age" Natural History, 2001
Another short magazine article on Connie's 2001 book. Full text in PDF"From Stardust to Us", The Spiral, 2001
A report (co-written with Jennifer Morgan) of guiding children at "The Walk Through Time" exhibit (March issue). Full text in PDF"Haunting the Wild Avocado" Wild Earth, 2000
Extract from chapter 1 of Connie's 2001 book, published in the Winter 2000/2001 issue. Full text in PDF"The Epic of Evolution" Earth Matters (Northwest Earth Institute), 1999
2-page adaptation of Connie's 1997 book, Green Space, Green Time, published in the Spring issue. JPG Image"Rewilding for Evolution" Wild Earth, 1999
An essay in support of Paul Martin's proposal to "Bring Back the Elephants" to North America, published in the same (Spring) issue. This essay also appears in an anthology of essays, Wild Earth, published by Milkweed Press in 2002. Full text in PDF"The Way of Science and the Epic of Evolution" UU World, 1998
Extracts from Connie's 1997 book, Green Space, Green Time: The Way of Science, published as the cover story for the Unitarian Universalists magazine (Nov/Dec). Full text in PDF"The Way of Science" The Humanist, 1998
More extracts from Connie's 1997 book, published in the member magazine of The Humanist Society (Mar/Apr). Full text in PDF"Evolution and the AAAS" Science and Spirit, 1998
A report of the 1997 "Epic of Evolution Conference" held in Chicago and sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Full text in PDF"Classic Quotations on the Epic of Evolution" Epic of Evolution, 1998
Fifty inspiring quotations, ranging from Charles Darwin and Maria Montessori to Carl Sagan and Loren Eiseley, to Brian Swimme and Ursula Goodenough. Full text in PDF"Re-Storying Biodiversity by Way of Science" Wild Earth, 1997
More extracts from Connie's 1997 book, published in the Spring issue. Full text in PDF"The Epic of Evolution" Teilhard Perspective, 1997
A lengthier version of the above report. Full text in PDF"Because It Is My Religion" Wild Earth, 1996
Extracts from Connie's 1997 book, Green Space, Green Time, published in the Fall issue. Full text in PDF"A Jostling on the Shelves" Teilhard Perspective, 1996
A sample of a book review column Connie contributed for several years. Full text in PDF"Clouds and the Crystal Bell" unpublished, 1998
Reflections on a natural death and hospice. Full text in PDF. NOTE: The "Clouds" stress-reduction audio mentioned in this text is available through www.NewHealthVisions.com.
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