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Thomas Berry Biography

Thomas Berry, C.P., PhD (November 9, 1914 – June 1, 2009) was a Catholic priest of the Passionist order, cultural historian and ecotheologian (although cosmologist and geologian – or “Earth scholar” – were his preferred descriptors). Among advocates of "ecospirituality" and the "New Story," he is famous for proposing the idea that a deep understanding of the history and functioning of the evolving universe is a necessary inspiration and guide for our own effective functioning as individuals and as a species. He is considered a leader in the tradition of Teilhard de Chardin.

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Thomas Berry Quotes

Scientists have suddenly become aware of the magic quality of the Earth and the entire universe.

Aware, Earth, Magic, Quality, Universe

The universe is the primary revelation of the divine, the primary scripture, the primary locus of divine-human communication.

Communication, Locus, Revelation, Revelations, Scripture

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

Active, Garden, Gardening, Religion, Spirit, Universe

Survival in any meaningful sense is the key issue of our time

Issues, Keys, Meaningful, Sense, Survival, Time

So long as we are under the illusion that we know best what is good for the earth and for ourselves, then we will continue our present course, with its devastating consequences on the entire Earth community. . . We need only listen to what the Earth is telling us. . . the time has come when we will listen, or we will die.

Community, Devastating, Environmental, Long

The environmental crisis is fundamentally a spiritual crisis.

Spiritual, Environmental, Crisis, Fundamentally

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.

Humanity, Excellent, Universe, False, Say

Vegetarianism is a way of life that we should all move toward for economic survival, physical well-being and spiritual integrity.

Integrity, Life, Moving, Spiritual, Way

Our main source of psychic energy in the future will depend on our ability to understand this symbol of evolution in an acceptable context of interpretation. Only in the context of an emergent universe will the human project come to an integral understanding of itself. We must, however, come to experience the universe in its psychic as well as in its physical aspect. We need to experience the sequence of evolutionary transformations as moments of grace, and also as celebration moments in our new experience of the sacred.

Acceptable, Evolution, Future, Human, New Experiences, Psychics

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.

Life, Order, Religion, Sustainable, Cosmology

We might sometimes reflect and recall that the purpose of all our science, technology, industry, manufacturing, commerce, and finance is celebration, planetary celebration. This is what moves the stars through the heavens and the earth through its seasons. The final norm of judgment concerning the success or failure of our technologies is the extent to which they enable us to participate more fully in this grand festival.

Heavens, Life, Moving, Science, Stars, Technology

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.

Community, World, Sacred, Human

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.

Divine, Intimacy, Moving, Needs, World

The Universe is a unity, an interacting and genetically-related community of beings bound together in an inseparable relationship in space and time. . . The human is that being in whom the Universe activates, reflects upon, and celebrates itself in conscious self-awareness.

Activates, Celebrates, Community, Self, Space, Together

We will go into the future as a single sacred community, or we will all perish in the desert.

Community, Desert, Nature, Single

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. In every phase of our imaginative, aesthetic, and emotional lives we are profoundly dependent on this larger context of the surrounding world.

Life, Emotional, Reality, Surrounding, Single, Context

During this period (of technological confinement
[and language]) the human mind has been placed in its narrowest confines it has experienced since consciousness emerged from its Paleolithic phase. Even the most primitive tribes have a larger vision of the universe, of our place and functioning within it, a vision that extends to celestial regions of space and to interior depths of the human in a manner far exceeding the parameters of our world of technological confinement.

Experienced, Mind, Our World, Period, Phase, Space

The present urgency is to begin thinking within the context of the whole planet, the integral earth community with all its human and other-than-human components.

Community, Earth, Thinking, Urgency

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

Children, Nature, Seen, Teaching

The future rests in the religious, political, economic and cultural capacity of humans to establish this larger context in which the particular traditions will find both support and fulfillment in a functional global community.

Capacity, Cultural, Establish, Peace, Religious, Support

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