Picturing the Great Lakes and Its Fragile Ecosystems

Great Lakes Fishing

A Look Out Over Lake Michigan

A Nor'easter on Lake Superior, April 8, 2007 : Iron Ore Ship the USS Herbert C. Jackson

Severe weather along the Straits of Mackinaw, June 11, 2017

Severe lightening along the Great Lakes

Massive ice balls along Lake Michigan

Five Magnificent Things About the Great Lakes | Canada Geese on Lake Ontario, Toronto

Niagara Falls near Toronto

The Winter Majesty of the Great Lakes

Amazon link

The Great Lakes―Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior―hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.

Kayaking the Inland Lakes of the Great Lakes

The Worth Of Water: A Great Lakes Story

2020 (Full Film) | Premiered Oct 16, 2020

The Worth of Water: A Great Lakes Story is a feature length documentary that follows the co-creators of Walk to Sustain Our Great Lakes, Julia Robson & Alyssa Armbruster, as they embark on their 343 mile walk from the shores of Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, WI to Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The two women interview political leaders, educators, activists and professionals to help bring a greater understanding of the issues these Great Lakes face, as well as highlighting the progress that has been made in restoring the lakes since the establishment of the Clean Water Act in 1972.

click to enlarge

What’s so great about the Great Lakes?

Cheri Dobbs and Jennifer Gabrys

Jan 10, 2017 

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-s-so-g... The North American Great Lakes — Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior — are so big that they border 8 states and contain 23 quadrillion liters of water. They span forest, grassland, and wetland habitats, supporting a region that’s home to 3,500 species. But how did such a vast and unique geological feature come to be? Cheri Dobbs and Jennifer Gabrys takes us all the way back to the Ice Age to find out.

Frankfort Lighthouse on Lake Michigan in Frankfort, Michigan

The Mystery of the Inland Waterway of Northern Michigan

Old Transportation Route

Nov 12, 2020

The inland waterway is a transportation route that spans almost from Lake Michigan to Huron, the 3000-year old history dates back when it was used by natives in order for them not have their journey cut short due how far away Macleay River would be.

➡️ Today you can take this scenic path and witness beautiful scenery such as forests on both sides while being surrounded by the vastness of nature.

This is the story of two adventure seekers: my son Noah and I.

➡️ We attempt to take the inland waterway from its western terminus in Conway Michigan to the lake here on our leaking Zodiac Killer boat.

It is a lonely time of year as the crisp air foreshadows winter when strong winds blow hard to pull a few days of rain into the region.

➡️ We wager that we can beat the downpour by cruising the 30 mile route to the safety of our warm Jeep parked at the mouth of the Sheboygan River and Lake Huron.

Join us as we practice our accents, joke about the sights, black the LAX and spend some father son time on another Great Lakes adventure.

📕 Book: The Inland Water Route [Paid Link]-https://amzn.to/3eVxDz7

Lake Michigan

Creation of the Great Lakes

How the Earth Was Made (S1, E7) | Full Episode | History

Jan 23, 2021

Join us as we highlight the trends that have defined us from the 1920s to now in History by the Decade - https://histv.co/ByTheDecade

The Great Lakes of North America are the largest expanse of fresh water on the planet. Searching for clues of their formation, our geologists delve deep into an underground salt mine, in Season 1, Episode 7, "Great Lakes." #HowtheEarthWasMade

Subscribe for more from How the Earth Was Made and other great HISTORY shows:

http://histv.co/SubscribeHistoryYT

Watch more How the Earth Was Made on YouTube in this playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...

Winter Ice Shards, Lake Michigan

Amazon link

No bodies of water compare to the Great Lakes. Superior is the largest lake on earth, and together all five contain a fifth of the world’s supply of standing fresh water. Their ten thousand miles of shoreline border eight states and a Canadian province and are longer than the entire Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States. Their surface area of 95,000 square miles is greater than New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island combined. People who have never visited them―who have never seen a squall roar across Superior or the horizon stretch unbroken across Michigan or Huron―have no idea how big they are. They are so vast that they dominate much of the geography, climate, and history of North America, affecting the lives of tens of millions of people.

The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas is the definitive book about the history, nature, and science of these remarkable lakes at the heart of North America. From the geological forces that formed them and the industrial atrocities that nearly destroyed them, to the greatest environmental success stories of our time, Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario are portrayed in all their complexity.

A Michigan native, Jerry Dennis also shares his memories of a lifetime on or near the lakes, including a six-week voyage as a crewmember on a tallmasted schooner. On his travels, he collected more stories of the lakes through the eyes of biologists, fishermen, sailors, and others he befriended while hiking the area’s beaches and islands.

Through storms and fog, on remote shores and city waterfronts, Dennis explores the five Great Lakes in all seasons and moods and discovers that they and their connecting waters―including the Erie Canal, the Hudson River, and the East Coast from New York to Maine―offer a surprising and bountiful view of America. The result is a meditation on nature and our place in the world, a discussion and cautionary tale about the future of water resources, and a celebration of a place that is both fragile and robust, diverse, rich in history and wildlife, often misunderstood, and worthy of our attention.

Most dangerous Great Lake: 23 people drowned in Lake Michigan so far in 2022. Swimming alert issued for Lake Michigan: 5-7 foot waves, dangerous currents.

Watch as big wind storm on Lake Michigan

develops over 24 hours

 Nov 12, 2015

The video begins with calm Lake Michigan at the Muskegon breakwater at 4:00 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015.  Transitioned by a time-lapse of the clouds rolling inland, followed by heavy rain and wind at 1:00 a.m. Thursday morning.  At 7:45 a.m.

High waves up to 18 feet slam Lake Michigan shoreline

Sep 23, 2021

 Dangerous weather is forecast in Chicago along

Lake Michigan with high waves of up to 18 feet expected.

Reading the Tea Leaves of American Christianity...

Phyllis Tickle, Evangelist of the Future for
the Church and Common Good

The Future of Faith

article link

Diana Butler Bass

September 22, 2022

September 22 marks the seventh anniversary of the death of Phyllis Tickle (1934 –2015), remembered for her contributions to religious publishing and as an author in her own right.

I think of her as a prophet.

In the last years of her life, Phyllis wrote the most influential book of her career: The Great Emergence. She invited Christians to think about the future of their traditions, theology, congregations, and spiritual practices. She was honest about what was ending and celebrated what was being newly birthed among us. That was her genius and joy — her unrelenting optimism about the future of faith. It was glorious to see her, in her mid-70s, speak about church and the future in a roomful of younger people with hope and confidence. Her exuberance for what could be coming earned her the nickname, “Evangelist of the Future.”

It was a privilege and honor to be one of her thought partners on that journey. We first met in 1998, when I was 39 and she was 64, and we worked together for the next seventeen years. She was a formative influence on my writing career and a trusted friend. I can’t remember how many times we shared a stage or followed one another in a pulpit. Most of it has melded into an embracing, expansive memory of “Adventures with Phyllis.”

But this week, one particular event came to mind. In 2010, she and I were invited to speak to the entire house of bishops of the Episcopal Church about the “emerging church.” (Aside for my Episcopal friends: the Rev. Stephanie Spellers led worship for this gathering.) It was a remarkable event that generated some of the most insightful and hopeful conversations I’ve ever had with denominational leaders. I felt energized — and believed that genuine institutional change would result from the work we’d done.

After the event, Phyllis and I drove back to the Houston airport together — and what happened in the car surprised me. I remarked on how well it had gone. And Phyllis replied, “It seemed to.” She paused, “I hope they listened. I’m not sure they realize how little time they have left.”

“What?” I asked, more than a little shocked.

“If you really look at the numbers, mainline churches don’t have much more than twelve to fifteen years left. The Episcopal Church is doing some things well. Maybe they’ve got a little longer.” The sentence hung in the air. “There’s not much time to change the future.”

I didn’t know what to say.

And I didn’t know how long she’d been thinking that the future was closer than most people imagined. Her predications for evangelical churches weren’t much brighter. In the decade we’d known one another, that airport drive revealed the most worried and least optimistic Phyllis I’d ever heard.

And, in the next five years, I’d hear her say it out loud. At clergy conferences, seminary gatherings, and publishing conferences. With wit and a smile, she’d warn her friends and critics alike: time is short.

* * * * * *

This week — the same week in which Phyllis died seven years ago — Pew Research released a report modeling the potential future of Christianity in the United States. While Phyllis worked on intuition and experience to think about the future (less data was available even a decade ago on these trends), Pew developed a model to draw four possible futures for American Christianity and released the report a few days ago.

Pew’s conclusion? By 2070, Christianity in the United States (the whole thing — all forms of Protestantism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy, all racial and ethnic Christian communities in a single category) will be a minority faith in a nation with a majority of “nones.”

The study states:

While the scenarios in this report vary in the extent of religious disaffiliation they project, they all show Christians continuing to shrink as a share of the U.S. population, even under the counterfactual assumption that all switching came to a complete stop in 2020. At the same time, the unaffiliated are projected to grow under all four scenarios.

The Pew research team insists that they aren’t prophets, and that their formal demographic models are not set in stone — “These are not the only possibilities, and they are not meant as predictions of what will happen. Rather, this study presents formal demographic projections of what could happen.”

Yet they are also convinced that all their probable futures result in a far more religiously diverse America with a minority Christian population. “Of course, it is possible that events outside the study’s model – such as war, economic depression, climate crisis, changing immigration patterns or religious innovations – could reverse current religious switching trends, leading to a revival of Christianity in the United States. But there are no current switching patterns in the U.S. that can be factored into the mathematical models to project such a result.”

The Pew Report Research summarized in three charts

Perhaps 2070 seems a long way off — anything could happen between now and then. But, when you are trying to re-imagine and re-structure large religious institutions with complex histories and traditions, fifty years isn’t much time to prepare and retool them for a future of being a minority in a largely secular nation. Indeed, most churches probably should have started this process with honesty and courage at least a decade ago.

In short, Phyllis was right. The Pew study shows that probability has finally caught up with the prophet.

I hope people will listen

Demographics are not destiny; trends are not predestination. Although Christianity probably will be a minority faith in a much more pluralistic nation in the next few decades, those of us who are Christians still have much work to do in advance of that huge, historic shift. Denial is a terrible strategy. Nostalgia is a dangerous choice. Letting the future take its own course is a kind of surrender of responsibility.

What will be the shape of the Christianity in that future America? Will we welcome how different it will be or fight it? Will Christianity be part of the problem of our political future or contribute to a flourishing pluralistic democracy? How Christians respond to both prophets and probabilities of the future is a big deal — not only for our children and grandchildren, but for American Christianity right now. The choices that this generation makes impress themselves on those who will follow us.

Because the future is right around the corner.

Process Cosmotheology and the Biological Universe, Part 4 - Andrew Davis' Response to Steven Dick's Naturalistic Cosmology

 Process Cosmotheology and the Biological Universe

Part 1 - Why a Process-based Universe is Essential

Part 2 - A New Philosophic-Theology

Part 3 - Steven Dick's Naturalistic Cosmology

Part 4 - Andrew Davis' Response to Steven Dick's Naturalistic Cosmology

* * * * * * *

Process Cosmotheology and the Biological Universe:

Andrew Davis' Process Cosmotheology Response

to Steven Dick's Naturalistic Cosmology

From Negation to Exemplification:

A Deeper Whiteheadian Cosmotheology

by Andrew M. Davis

October 11, 2022

An Abstract Presented to the Process Group of "Cobb & Friends"

Andrew M. Davis argues that Steven J. Dick’s laudable project of [a naturalistic] “cosmotheology” can be considerably strengthened by Whitehead’s bio-centric cosmophilosophy which culminates in (rather than negates) a robust  [process-based] cosmotheology.

• In demonstrating this, Davis shows how Dick’s six principles of cosmotheology, instead of consisting in a series of cosmological negations (even a negation of “God”), can actually consist in a series of metaphysical exemplifications.

• Whitehead’s wider naturalism coupled with his theological realism allow for imaginative metaphysical continuity in our reflection all the way “down” and all the way “up” the biological universe: from terrestrial and extraterrestrial life to the culminating life of God.

• What is more, for Davis, Whitehead’s wider cosmotheology arguably re-integrates and resolves outstanding metaphysical problems that remain unanswered by Dick’s proposal (and those of others).

• Davis concludes his chapter with six alternative principles of a deeper Whiteheadian cosmotheology.

Biography

Andrew M. Davis is Program Director for the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology. He received his Ph.D. in Religion and Process Philosophy from Claremont School of Theology. He received the 2013 Award for Excellence in Biblical Studies, the 2017 fellowship with FASPE (Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics) and the 2020 Presidential Award for Academic Excellence. Andrew was recently nominated and elected as a fellow for the International Society of Science and Religion (ISSR).

Davis is author, editor or co-editor of several recent books including Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy (recently nominated for the 2022 Book Prize of the International Society of Science and Religion); Nature In Process: Organic Proposals in Philosophy, Society, and Religion and Process Cosmology: New Integrations in Science and Philosophy.

Davis' organization of the recent Templeton sponsored conference titled “Astrobiology, Exo-Philosophy and Cosmic Religion” brought together over a dozen scholars across science, philosophy and theology/religion to explore the relevance of process philosophy and theology to the interdisciplinary field of astrobiology.

Stay tuned for a forthcoming volume from this event. Follow Andrew’s work at andrewmdavis.info

* * * * * * *

Publications by Andrew M. Davis

   

 

From Negation to Exemplification:

A Deeper Whiteheadian Cosmotheology

by Dr Andrew M. Davis, July 27, 2022

Dr Andrew M. Davis joined the RACS Network via Zoom for

a fascinating talk titled: "From Negation to Exemplification:

A Deeper Whiteheadian Cosmotheology.

Davis' website: https://www.andrewmdavis.info/

Process Theologian and Philosopher,
Andrew M. Davis

Whitehead’s Robust Bio-Centric

Processual CosmoPhilosophy

Presented to "Cobb & Friends"

by Andrew Davis

Oct 11, 2022

https://cobb.institute/john-cobb-friends/

Cobb & Friends YouTube channel

A Few Notes by RE Slater

*Steven's presentation consisted of reading from his Power Point slides even as Andrew Davis would later do himself the following week. Notes were mostly unneeded because of the thoroughness of each presenter's slides.

*metaphysics = met·a·phys·ics (noun) - the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.

Dick's naturalistic cosmology has not metaphysic or ontological ground of being. It just is as a materialistic corpus making metaphysics irrelevant. As a pure naturalistic system it intentionally defaces the "divine ground of our Being."

As consequence, we might take Dick's naturalistic system and expand it quite "naturally" into a Whiteheadian system of processual thought involving all cosmology and cosmological metaphysics. This then takes Dicks non-metaphysical system and turns into a processually-based metaphysic which may then include God, divine will, affectations, experience, generative value, teleology, and so forth. Without any metaphysic we simple are with no meaning beyond survival and pro-creation of some kind.

"The soil of our being is deeply and intimately connected to the cosmology of our being."

or,

"Without god's reality there can be no reality."

This then shows us that Whitehead's process metaphysic may be further circumscribed, defined, and filled with a process theology/theism which is "naturally" a more expansive view than a bare atheistic statement that "The universe just is. Get over it."

Says Whitehead,

"We have no right to deface the divine essence of the universe."

In a process cosmology we might say that all things are conscious in their own way.

This also means that a process metaphysics requires value, beauty, ethics whereas a naturalistic cosmology holds no value but is a consequence - not a necessity - of being.

A process teleology is always in the direction of beauty, love, goodness. Pope John Paul once said, "We know God exists because there is beauty, love, goodness in the world." Thereby saying, to a process metaphysician's ears, "That all reality is process, and process is reality."

Process Philosophy considers reality as process reality. That the universe, the earth, all living and non-living things, are evidence to, and testimony of, a process-based cosmology, metaphysic, of all scientific discovery and inquiry, of social-ecological cultures and cultures which are non-ecological, and basically, how all things work. This is what is meant when saying "process metaphysics and cosmologies are processually based all the up and all the way down."

Further, a Process Cosmology is:

• pan-experiential - how the universe works. If one thing affects one thing, they together will affect all other nearby things, and like the "butterfly affect" or "ripples on a pond" work in distributive mass perturbing/affecting/creating/etc everything in a series of living, dynamic processes.

• pan-relational - all things are relational across the spectrum of creation and experience; too, all things affect the part as well as the whole, the macro as well as the micro; all things are interconnected as one complex field of corporality.

• and, pan-psychic - that aspect of non-materiality which might be described as of the soul, or spiritual, mental, emotional, or even astral-ogical (but not strictly, astro-logical). That which "relates to the non-physical realm of existence to which various psychic and paranormal phenomena are ascribed, and in which the physical human body and/or physical creation may participate experientially and relationally. Example, "Spiritual or astral psychism referring to any astral plane of experience."

The question arises as to what is the ontological primitive for process cosmology as a metaphysic.... 

What is Alfred North Whitehead's theory of Concrescence?

According to Whitehead, consciousness, thought, and sensory perception are not essential to our experience of reality, but are derived from the process of 'concrescence' by which prehensions are integrated into fully determinate feelings.

A non-Whiteheadian classical interpretation may be referenced here: ontological primitive in a nutshell.

RE Slater:

The mainstream physicalist ontology, for instance, posits that reality is constituted by irreducible entities—which I shall call 'ontological primitives', or simple 'primitives'—outside and independent of experience. According to classical physicalism, these primitives, in-and-of themselves, do not carry experience but Whiteheadian processual primitives do carry a kind of experience.

 

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

Hubble Space Telescope's Deep Space View

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Andrew M. Davis - all rights reserved

------------------------------------------------

SELECT WEEK 2 COMMENTS

------------------------------------------------

From RE Slater to Everyone 02:03 PM

Thank you Andrew. And to Stephen Dick too in his efforts to explain the universe we live in. Without Dick's work Whiteheadian process perhaps might not have as deep a response as it can. It further underlines the clarity of insight by ANW so many years ago and it's continuing relevance to society today.

From Jay McDaniel to Everyone 02:07 PM

Andrew, could you say a little more about God being metaphysically necessary?  I'm wondering if it might be more accurate to say that, for Whitehead, God is cosmologically and empirically necessary.  After all, God was not included in his categories of existence, even as, for empirical reasons, he felt it important to recognize a principle or order and novelty. Also, I wonder what you do with the fact that Whitehead says, among many other things, that the world creates God even as God creates the world. Does this not give meaning to Professor Dick's idea that, in some way, God is a "product" of the universe?

From Lynn De Jonghe to Everyone 02:08 PM

Leemon McHenry, The Event Universe, Edinburgh, 2020

From Daryl Anderson to Everyone 02:09 PM

found it AI page 237 "§ 16. The Flux of Energy. An occasion of experience which includes a human mentality is an extreme instance, at one end of the scale, of those happenings which constitute nature."

From Daryl Anderson to Everyone 02:15 PM

To further challenge notions of "life" or sentience, consider the work of physicist Attila Grandpierre viz (a) Helios - the sentience of the Sun, and also the (b)  "fundamental biological nature of the universe". http://www.grandpierre.hu/site/english/

he has a chapter in Andrew's "Process Cosmology"

From Bob Mesle to Everyone 02:17 PM

Andrew, re possibilities. I still do not find it helpful to postulate a platonic realm of eternal objects. It seems better to me to say that a possibility is anything that can happen—can be actualized—given the past actual world. If the actual past is infinite, then an infinite realm of possibilities seems likely.

From Lynn De Jonghe to Everyone 02:19 PM

Yes Bob, I agree. Further, once an event occurs that constrains the remaining possibilities, even as it creates new possibilities.

From Jay McDaniel to Everyone 02:21 PM

Whitehead uses the term transcendence in a unique way: actual entities transcend one another. They have their own autonomy. But he also speaks of God "transcending" the world even as, so he says, the world also "transcends" God. They have their respective autonomy.  For Whitehead, the quality of God's autonomy is quite different from that of, say, a quantum event in the depths of an atom. Andrew wants to argue that finite entities are contingent in a way that God is not - but in principle you could say all of this and add that God, too, is contingent in that God could not exist. (Andrew rejects his.)

From Bob Mesle to Everyone 02:21 PM

Lynn, yes,  I agree. The number of possibilities, even if infinite, may be continually enlarged.

From Lynn De Jonghe to Everyone 02:25 PM

On communicating beauty, one thinks of the symbols that Carl Sagan helped to design for the SETI voyage to outer space.

From Al Gephart to Everyone 02:27 PM

I wrestle with how each of these perspectives accounts for the reality of love, that there is an energy deep within humans and even the other-than human that motivate actions whick may threaten its own existence. Isn’t the naturalistic impulse always toward continual existence?

From Prof J Paul to Everyone 02:29 PM

Yes Meta-Aesthetics

From Daryl Anderson to Everyone 02:30 PM

trees providing "mutual aid" to one another... manifesting moralities without language ?

From Michael Witmer to Everyone 02:32 PM

The notion of World loyalty seems apt here.

From David Bartosch to Everyone 02:32 PM

Dark Forest Theory

From Prof J Paul to Everyone 02:35 PM

Sacred Geometrics ..?

---

From Cobb Institute / Richard Livingston to Everyone 02:48 PM

For those interested in the topic of metaphysical necessity from a process-relational perspective, I strongly recommend the following book: ON METAPHYSICAL NECESSITY: ESSAYS ON GOD, THE WORLD, MORALITY, AND DEMOCRACY, by Franklin Gamwell - https://sunypress.edu/Books/O/On-Metaphysical-Necessity

From Lynn De Jonghe to Everyone 02:51 PM

Whitehead might call these “vagaries’ the products  of misplaced concreteness>o