In reality, there is a single integral community of the Earth that includes all its component members whether human or other than human. In this community every being has its own role to fulfill, its own dignity, its own inner spontaneity. Every being has its own voice. Every being declares itself to the entire universe. Every being enters into communion with other beings.

Thomas Berry

Categorized in : Reality Life Emotional

The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightening and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees, ~~ all these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related.

Thomas Berry

stars nature flower

The natural world is the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence.

Thomas Berry

damage community world

The divine communicates to us primarily through the language of the natural world. Not to hear the natural world is not to hear the divine.

Thomas Berry

language natural world

Teaching children about the natural world should be seen as one of the most important events in their lives.

Thomas Berry

nature teaching children

We lose our souls if we lose the experience of the forest, the butterflies, the song of the birds, if we can't see the stars at night.

Thomas Berry

stars spiritual song

We are talking only to ourselves. We are not talking to the rivers, we are not listening to the wind and stars. We have broken the great conversation. By breaking that conversation we have shattered the universe. All the disasters that are happening now are a consequence of that spiritual 'autism.'

Thomas Berry

stars spiritual talking

We can break the mountains apart; we can drain the rivers and flood the valleys. We can turn the most luxuriant forests into throw-away paper products. We can tear apart the great grass cover of the western plains and pour toxic chemicals into the soil and pesticides onto the fields until the soil is dead and blows away in the wind. We can pollute the air with acids, the rivers with sewage, the seas with oil - all this in a kind of intoxication with our power for devastation at an order of magnitude beyond all reckoning.

Thomas Berry

oil blow rivers

If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur, then the emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and spiritual life of the human is diminished or extinguished. Without the soaring birds, the great forests, the sounds and coloration of the insects, the free-flowing streams, the flowering fields, the sight of clouds by day and the stars at night, we become impoverished in all that makes us human.

Thomas Berry

stars spiritual night

Both education and religion need to ground themselves within the story of the universe as we now understand this story through empirical knowledge. Within this functional cosmology, we can overcome our alienation and begin the renewal of life on a sustainable basis. This story is a numinous revelatory story that could evoke the vision and the energy required to bring not only ourselves but the entire planet into a new order of magnificence.

Thomas Berry

life order religion

What does the Earth Desire? I will put it in just a few short sentences... To be admired in her loveliness, To be tasted in her delicious fruits, To be listened to in her teaching, To be endured in the severity of her discipline, To be cared for as a maternal source from whence we come, a destiny to which we return. It's very simple.

Thomas Berry

destiny simple teaching

The environmental crisis is fundamentally a spiritual crisis.

Thomas Berry

environmental crisis spiritual

The universe must be experienced as the Great Self. Each is fulfilled in the other: the Great Self is fulfilled in the individual self, the individual self is fulfilled in the Great Self. Alienation is overcome as soon as we experience this surge of energy from the source that has brought the universe through the centuries. New fields of energy become available to support the human venture. These new energies find expression and support in celebration. For in the end the universe can only be explained in terms of celebration. It is all an exuberant expression of existence itself.

Thomas Berry

expression self time

In relation to the earth we have been autistic for centuries. Only now have we begun to listen with some attention and with a willingness to respond to the earth's demands that we cease our industrial assault, that we abandon our inner rage against the conditions of our earthly existence, that we renew our human participation in the grand liturgy of the universe.

Thomas Berry

environmental demand attention

We need to move: from a spirituality of alienation from the natural world to a spirituality of intimacy with the natural world from a spirituality of the divine as revealed in words to a spirituality of the divine as revealed in the visible world about us.

Thomas Berry

world moving needs

The destiny of humans cannot be separated from the destiny of earth.

Thomas Berry

progressive destiny earth

It is false to say that humanity is the most excellent being in the universe. The most excellent being in the universe is the universe itself.

Thomas Berry

excellent universe humanity

It's all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story.

Thomas Berry

fit stories inspiring

Diversity is the magic. It is the first manifestation, the first beginning of the differentiation of a thing and of simple identity. The greater the diversity, the greater the perfection.

Thomas Berry

diversity simple perfection

Gardening is an active participation in The deepest mysteries of the universe.

Thomas Berry

garden spirit religion

You cannot have well people on a sick planet.

Thomas Berry

planets sick people