The greater the diversity, the greater the perfection. Thomas Berry More Quotes by Thomas Berry More Quotes From Thomas Berry You cannot have well people on a sick planet. Thomas Berry planets sick people As humans we are born of the Earth, nourished by the Earth, healed by the Earth. Thomas Berry healed born earth We are not lacking in the dynamic forces needed to create the future. We live immersed in a sea of energy beyond all comprehension. Thomas Berry future sea inspirational The Great Work now, as we move into a new millennium, is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner. Thomas Berry transition would-be moving The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. Thomas Berry communion environmental inspiring We will go into the future as a single sacred community, or we will all perish in the desert. Thomas Berry desert community nature To attain peace among the nations in any dynamic or enduring form requires not simply political negotiation but a new mode of consciousness. The magnitude of this change is in the order of religious conversion or of spiritual rebirth rather than of treaty processes or even of inter-cultural understanding. Simply to recognize the basic nature and dimension of the issues we face is already an advance. Thomas Berry religious spiritual peace Wildness we might consider as the root of the authentic spontaneities of any being. It is that wellspring of creativity whence comes the instinctive activities that enable all living beings to obtain their food, to find shelter, to bring forth their young: to sing and dance and fly through the air and swim through the depths of the sea. This is the same inner tendency that evokes the insight of the poet, the skill of the artist and the power of the shaman. Thomas Berry creativity artist life The Universe story is the quintessence of reality. We perceive the story. We put it in our language, the birds put it in theirs, and the trees put it in theirs. We can read the story of the Universe in the trees. Everything tells the story of the Universe. The winds tell the story, literally, not just imaginatively. The story has its imprint everywhere, and that is why it is so important to know the story. If you do not know the story, in a sense you do not know yourself; you do not know anything. Thomas Berry bird wind reality We see quite clearly that what happens to the nonhuman, happens to the human. What happens to the outer world, happens to the inner world. Thomas Berry humans happens world If the earth does grow inhospitable toward human presence, it is primarily because we have lost our sense of courtesy toward the earth and its inhabitants. Thomas Berry empathy doe kindness The universe is the primary revelation of the divine, the primary scripture, the primary locus of divine-human communication. Thomas Berry revelations scripture communication What is clear is that the earth is mandating that the human community assume a responsibility never assigned to any previous generation...Our task at this critical moment is to awaken the energies needed to create the new world and to evoke a universal communion of all parts of life. Thomas Berry community energy responsibility The real skill is to raise the sails and to catch the power of the wind as it passes by. Thomas Berry skills real wind All human activities, professions, programs, and institutions must henceforth be judged primarily by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore, or foster a mutually enhancing human/Earth relationship. Thomas Berry institutions program earth Our fulfillment is not in our isolated human grandeur, but in our intimacy with the larger earth community, for this is also the larger dimension of our being. Thomas Berry dimensions community earth The human venture depends absolutely on this quality of awe and reverence and joy in the Earth and all that lives and grows upon the Earth. As soon as we isolate ourselves from these currents of life and from the profound mood that these engender within us, then our basic life-satisfactions are diminished. None of our machine-made products, none of our computer-based achievements can evoke that total commitment to life. Thomas Berry growing-up profound commitment The excitement of life is in the numinous experience wherein we are given to each other in that larger celebration of existence in which all things attain their highest expression, for the universe, by definition, is a single gorgeous celebratory event. Thomas Berry definitions expression life The world of life, of spontaneity, the world of dawn and sunset and starlight, the world of soil and sunshine, of meadow and woodland, of hickory and oak and maple and hemlock and pineland forests, of wildlife dwelling around us, of the river and its wellbeing--all of this [is] the integral community in which we live. Thomas Berry sunset sunshine nature In our totality we are born of the Earth. Our spirituality itself is earth-derived... If there is no spirituality in the earth, then there is no spirituality in ourselves Thomas Berry spirituality born earth
