WEBVTT

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[sil.]

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[music]

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We’ve gone mad, star on living
earth, destroying the planet

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but more specifically with terminating
the last 65 million years

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of life development.

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We don’t understand the earth
as the sacred reality.

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The trees are sacred, the
rivers, the mountains,

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the universe, in particular planet earth.
It’s a communion of subjects,

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not a collection of objects.

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If we don’t learn that
nothing is gonna work.

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Thomas Berry is a multitude of things,

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something like looking at a mosaic

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or looking at a rose window with many
petals and many colors coming through it.

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So he’s a monk and a priest out
of the Catholic tradition.

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He is an intellectual, an academic,
a professor, he’s also a writer

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and a Geologian who’s put
together a comprehensive story

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of our journey in the universe.

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One of the great contributions that Thomas made to
my life he named, what was the essential discovery

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that was… that the universe is
fundamentally story and when he said that,

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all that I had learned in
geology, or astronomy, or biology

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uh… came together in a
single pattern, a story.

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[music]

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Last night the moon was shining
on this wonderful bay.

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And asked the moon, \"What should I say?\"
And the moon said, \"Tell them the story.\"

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And I asked the wind, \"What should I
say?\" It said, \"Tell them the story.\"

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And I asked the clover out on the lawn,

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\"What should I say?\" And the clover
said, \"Tell them the story, my story,

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the mountain story, the river story,
you’re story, the Indian story.

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The great story.

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Most people’s have their values

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rooted in some kind of a uh… cosmology.
It’s a story of

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how things came to be in the beginning,
how that came to be as they are

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and how humans fit into the cosmology and the
direction in which human affairs should go.

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The whole sense of the sacred
is established in this story,

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traditionally, it’s a story of the universe

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that has come into being and it’s perceived
as moving in seasonal renewals cycles.

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[music]

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In China, they heard this
wonderful sense of cosmic liturgy

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where the whole court

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had to be transformed at season.
The Emperor had to move

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from one set of apartments to
another, he had to change the

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color of his garments and a whole set of
rituals brought the seasons into existence.

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So if they played summer music

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in the winter that would
devastate the cosmological

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and this was the great
ritual story of the Chinese

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that validated their existence. As
long as the cosmology functions well,

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there is a basis for dealing
with human situations.

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There is another time so, however,

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a very difficult cosmological problem.
We have discovered a cosmology

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that is an emerging cosmology
that has gone through

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a sequence of transformations.

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The story we’ve arrived at through all this
work is simple one, it’s that the universe

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flares forth into being, some 13
billion years ago as… as energy,

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as light in these elementary particles and
then goes through a series of transformations.

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At that time, galaxies came forth

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as permanent structures, it was a onetime event
that completely changed the nature of the universe.

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Now this cosmology is a secular cosmology,

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there’s been presented to that to
us as essentially without meaning,

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it’s random or it’s mechanistic,

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but it is not achieved a sacred status. It’s
given us this awesome power that we have

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and it’s the power that we don’t know what
to do with or how to judge good and evil

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because we don’t understand the
Earth as a sacred reality,

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the tree as sacred, the
rivers, the mountains.

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My heaven is to establish
our capacity to experience

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the uh… developmental story of the
universe as our sacred story.

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[music]

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There was a time when the oxygen in the air

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that has been created by
the plant them in the sea.

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This oxygen though was
poison, it was deadly.

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It ate into the rocks. It
killed off every living form.

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There had to be a transformation
take place. Forms had to invent

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a way of using the energy
to create organic substance

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out of the inorganic world.
Animals can’t do that,

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only plants can do that.
That’s why Alcestis says,

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\"All live is grass because all life
depends on what grass can do.”

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This I think it’s a moment of grace.

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Something happened that nobody can explain.
The invention of sexuality,

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it’s a moment of grace. Evolution couldn’t
happen without the invention of sexuality.

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When one life form learned to
subsist on another life form

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that again was a transformation,
the moment of grace.

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The Divine and creating the
universe makes a universe

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that creates itself. That’s
the miracle of the creation.

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The present scientific story of
how the universe came into being,

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how it is evolved in its psychic, spiritual
as well as its physical dimension

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that story is the…

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is the comprehensive story for everyone, for
people of the past, for people of the present,

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for people of the future to know who we are
and the significance of… of our existence.

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It’s not a story that’s
part of our consciousness

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and unless that story becomes the center
of our consciousness we’re… we’re…

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we’re… we’re off stage, where we’re off center,
where we’re not umm… we’re not talking truthfully,

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not trying to be deceptive, but
we just don’t get the picture,

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Tom gave us the picture. And
I do find that the story,

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the new story cuts across all lines. I’ve
been in poor neighborhoods with that story.

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I’ve been in Native American
reservations with that story,

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I’ve been in the Philippines with that story
and barrios with story, people respond.

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It’s… It just opens a world up.

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I can’t remember the year I met Tom
Barry, a couple of things he said,

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it really just turned my
whole thinking upside down.

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He said, \"The earth is the center of everything, of our
consciousness, of our physical being, of our world.

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God is not out of this
picture but the picture

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is a picture of Earth. \"And I
was a nice theological person,

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I had gone to seminary and I had been a
priest and I was running a cathedral

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and so I didn’t think the earth
was the center of everything.

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I thought that… that… that God
was the center of everything

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and that the human personality was the image
of God and at the top of this whole pyramid

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and so for him just to
turn that upside down,

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it blew me away.

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Paul Winter and his concert

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became artist in residence. It’s a
cathedral. In the same way that Tom Barry

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became an honorary canon of the cathedral,
I mean, they became my principal cohorts,

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my partners in crime, in trying to
make the cathedral a green experience,

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a wondrous cosmic experience.

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[music]

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We started off by creating a
program called \"The Winter souls.\"

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And the cathedral is totally black
and then down behind the high altar,

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there was tiny flicker of light
that light grew larger and larger

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and it turned into a golden disc

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and so we said, \"God,
this is the sun rise.\"

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And then the… the whole cathedral was
bathed in light. Well, people went nuts.

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I mean, this was the most
dramatic, moving show of…

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of the most important thing that happens
in the life of the planet, each year.

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[sil.]

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Western civilization developed an alienation
from the natural world very early

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and its religious history and…
and its cultural history.

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In religious history, we uh… move from

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perception of the divine on a cosmological
alter that is in the order of the

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not your world to the
perception of the divine

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and the historical order.

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This alienation was further
deepened in… in the Medieval Period

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in the 14th century, when the Black
Death occurred, a third of Europe died.

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People were frightened of the natural world, after
that they didn’t know what caused all this difficulty.

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So they decided that the world was wicked

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and the most important thing was to
be disengaged from the natural world.

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You get redeemed out of the world rather than
learning how to live intimately with the world

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and the perception of the divine
in the natural world was lost,

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a sacred dimension and from
then on it became possible

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to commodify the world to… to
see the… the natural world

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as being there for use and
this was further developed

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in the 1880s, when we
moved from an organic,

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ever renewing economy based
on the agricultural process

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to an extractive non-renewing
industrial economy.

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Now the extractive economy based on

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use of resources that are limited
and did not renew is the disaster.

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Thomas feels there’s a key idea

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that underlies much of Western thought
and idea which unconsciously drives

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and shapes our actions.
The idea of a millennium

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that is a thousand years that will occur

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toward the end of the world,

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when the human condition would
be surmounted or it’d be peace,

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justice and abundance. Uh… the reign
of the saints would take place.

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The sorrow of life would be done away with.
This was a part of

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the revelatory experience that was
promised to Western civilization

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that this time would come. It
didn’t come but Western Christians

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have always longed for it.
It has been the ideal,

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and the governing idea in the West, even
when it’s lost, its religious appeal

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and that’s what subconsciously is
driving the industrial process,

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the space process.

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In the Western mind, there’s a deep
hidden rage against the human condition

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of accepting life on the terms
that life has granted us.

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So we about to… we’re gonna
take the planet to pieces

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and make a better world, like a dream
world, Disney, painless world.

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[sil.]

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In my own life, the awakening to
the real challenge of our times

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took place rather early. I was
born in 1914 in North Carolina.

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The South after the Civil War found that

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it couldn’t make it as egalitarian
society in confrontation

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with the industrial society so the north.
So the south began to industrialize.

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It built it’s cotton mills
and then it developed

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its commercial world. I lived an area

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without paved roads, the automobile
just come right through a distance.

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And somehow I saw when I was a uh… If I
was gonna make it in this type of world,

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I would have to develop a commercial sense,

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those early years were years when I…
I brooded over, what was happening?

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So from the very beginning, I’ve
instinctively oriented myself

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toward wilderness and became the
governing reflection of my life.

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I began to figure how to escape
the commercial enterprise.

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By the time I was 20, I decided
that I needed time to think,

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I needed time to think about things.

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So I figured, by that time, I have
only two places you could go to think,

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one would be prison and the other monastery.
That’s seriously, right. That’s exactly, right.

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So I decide I go to monastery.

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Thomas Berry joined the
Passionists Order in 1933.

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He took up the study of history especially
that of comparative religious traditions.

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I discovered myself and I don’t think a
person can discover themselves in building,

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roads and all the gadgets that we have.

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After I finished my studies and got
my degree in 1948, I went to China.

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Standing on the deck he noticed
me saying goodbye to my wife.

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And it’s typical of him in his sensitivity

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that it would have been a touching scene for him
so he noticed me even before I ever knew him.

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And uh… then later, I found out that
among this group of missionaries.

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Uh… he was the one who had

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not just been ordained and prepared to
go to the missions, but he had actually

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gotten a PhD in history.
I don’t know of any

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uh… discipline, that is more effective

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in giving a person a
context in which to think

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and so I studied the
Mediterranean Civilization,

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the Palestinian world, the
Persian Empire sent over to the

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world of Asia and even China.

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The Confucian Traditions has had a
great influence on Thomas’s thinking.

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This powerful sense is one
fulfills one’s own human destiny,

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one activates this great virtue of authenticity
and the beauty in the Chinese world is that…

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it’s that authenticity and sincerity
which is in the whole universe itself,

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reflected back and forth between the
human and the whole cosmic order.

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It’s a magnificent sense of
the continuity of the human…

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human interiority, human consciousness
and human action in relation

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to the natural world and the cosmos
itself, which is one of the great avenues

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into the universe story. While I was there
though, studying the language, Moa came in,

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When Mao came in. The university
sent us back to the States.

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I think it was probably
providential because

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what it meant was that he came back
and instead established himself

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as a missionary in a much larger sense.

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Of course, Teilhard was
uh… his inspiration and

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uh… and I suppose that with another… another
thing that he missed about having to leave China

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that he couldn’t explore more
of Teilhard’s time there.

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Teilhard was a Jesuit. He was
trained in paleontology,

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who was following up some of the work of Darwin
in evolution and especially emphasizing the

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development of consciousness
alongside of the

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physical evolution of
humankind in of all species.

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Teilhard is the first person to
understand that we have a sacred story.

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Now… now it has to be our basic
orientation toward the universe

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and he also understood that the universe
from its beginning is… is a spiritual,

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as well as a physical reality.
There’s no such thing

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as a material being. You
cannot even know matter…

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matter without form is nothing
and form is always spiritual.

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Teilhard gave the big view
of the encounter religions.

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He really didn’t enter into them,
but Tom made them come alive

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and I think this is one of the great
creative moments between Tom and Teilhard.

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And then there was another one and that is

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bringing out the ecological issues

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which certainly Teilhard did not address.

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In 1969, Thomas Berry established the
Riverdale Center for religious research

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on the banks of the Hudson. It was a
center in the full sense of the word.

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It was an intellectual center.
It was a Friendship Center.

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It was a Community Creating Center and
he was just beginning to come into this

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fuller phase of his life as a Geologian

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of beginning to see the universe story
emerge. So to be a student of Thomas

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at that time was a time out of time.

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The Riverdale center was found as a place

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where person could come to
understand the universe and

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as meaning dimensions and
it will bring together

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wisdom of the various traditions
of… of the world. And here is a

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Pāli text of Buddhism, which is
the wisdom of indigenous people,

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the wisdom of women, the wisdom
of the classical traditions

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and the wisdom of science. He had
collected thousands of volumes

00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
of Western history culture,

00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
religions in the same for Asia and indigenous
traditions, but then also the Indian tradition,

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
Mircea Eliade and the scientific
wisdom that was coming out here.

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
Out here in India is the Sanskrit world,

00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
this is the Mahabharata which is the basic

00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
uh… epic poem of uh… India.

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
One evening, Father Thomas gave a paper
based upon his own studies of Buddhism

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
and when it was all over,

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
this uh… Buddhist monk said, \"I felt
as if I was hearing my old teacher,

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
back in Japan.\" He was so moved.

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
Buddhist world you have know Pāli,
Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese.

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
There probably were people who were

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
more technically competent in Sanskritist
then he was. But I questioned

00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
whether that anybody who was able to penetrate into the
essence of those religious systems the way he was.

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
To be in his classes was to open the doors

00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
to these great traditions
was to sit with him

00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
and feel that wisdom. Now we’d
say Riverdale of all things

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
is a birthing of the great work. It’s a
birthing of a vision of a new sensibility

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
about the universe and
our connection to it.

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
Each period of history
has a great work to do

00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
and to identify that great work is most
important and the nobility of the lives

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
of the people, of that period depends
on their fidelity to the great work

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
and the extent to which they carry it out.

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
Here at the Research Center in Riverdale,
this has been identified with clarity

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
that few other places been
equal were identified

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
the issue and also the conditions under
which this devastation can be stopped

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
and which the renewal can take place.

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
And this depends on
something very, very simple

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
what is the cause of the difficulty in the first
place? Because of the difficulty in the first place,

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
it has to deal with a discontinuity
between the human, and the non-human,

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
and the assumption of the
human that they have a right

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
to explore it the non-human.
And St. Thomas says,

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
\"Why are there so many uh… different things\" and he
says, \"Because the divine could not image itself

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
or to anyone being, it created
a great diversity of saint.

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
So that the perfection lacking to
one would be supplied by the others

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
and the whole universe
together will participate in…

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
in manifest the divine more than
any single being whatsoever.

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
\"Things cannot be and that is
simply in their isolated selves.

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
Or else nothing is itself
without everything else.

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
And that is why and the total story of the
universe, it is taken 14 billion years

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
to have us here. The greatest failure of…

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
of Western civilization of the
greatest destructive force

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
comes with a type of jurisprudence

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
that shaped America because
we wrote a constitution

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
that gave all rights to humans

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
and the non-human has no rights.

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
It’s simply there is background for the human.
Well, that to my mind, it’s an inadequate way

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
of understanding the human because the
human is a member of a great community

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
of the planet Earth and
everything is there for

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
a communion relationship,
not for use relationship.

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
And that’s the flaw. When we get a marigold

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
based on four things individual
rights, participatory government,

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
private property and to
explore the enterprise

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
and these first three have now become
subservient to the economic enterprise.

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
Government has defamed in
all its efforts to limit

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
the exploitation of the corporation
regime, the whole of education

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
is based on the service of the corporation.

00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
Uh… so that we’re… we’re
giving ourselves over to the…

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
to the great financial-industrial-commercial
corporations.

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
[music]

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
What we have faced with is… is a
transformation of the planet itself.

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
Because the planet and
it’s chemistry has being

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
upset in such a way that the
life forms are no longer viable

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
and how to renew the planet, wherein
it’s saturated with chemical waste.

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
Uh… it’s such an order of magnitude

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
as those extremely arch was tasked.

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
In fact, in the 1940s there was half a million
tons of industrial chemicals made in this country.

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
Now, we’re making 200 million
tons each every year.

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
Chemicals at the planet Earth cannot deal

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
with the extinctions that are
taking place have not been equal

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
in 65 million years.

00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
The geological period now ending due to the
impact of human activity is the Cenozoic.

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
Thomas Berry sees the Cenozoic
as an immensely creative period

00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
for the flourishing of
wildly diverse life forms.

00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
He writes, \"If moments such as dawn and dusk, birth
and death, and the seasons are of such significance,

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
how awesome must be the present moment

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
when we witness the dying of the
earth in its Cenozoic expression.\"

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
We are not just passing into another historical
period or another culture modification,

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
we are changing the
chemistry of the planet,

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
we’re change the bio-systems, we’ve
changed the geo-systems of the planet

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
on a scale of hundreds of millions of years
but more specifically, we’re terminating

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
the last 65 million years
of life development.

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
You know, a person would say, \"Well, where do
we go from here?\" To my mind, if we survive it,

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
if we go into a really sustainable world,

00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
we will be passing from the terminal,
Cenozoic into what I call the Equili-Zoic.

00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
It’s an era of ecology.

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
Therefore, it the Zoi means life
and this is ecological life,

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
which really means it’s the era in
which the totality of the universe

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
of… of the creation, of the
environment has got to be

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
that which is foremost in our minds.

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
And this is beginning to emerge in very
interesting ways umm… alternatively,

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
I think around the planet, as
people are trying to re-imagine

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
and reinvent the human in
a more sustainable way.

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
For example, Genesis farm in Western New
Jersey has been Miriam MacGills’s response

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
for more than two decades
now to Thomas’s vision.

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
He gave paper on \"Contemplation and World Order.\" The surprise
was he said, \"Well, I’m not going to really talk about

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
contemplation so much as what world
order are you contemplating\"

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
and it just shifted the whole
focus of that conference

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
and left me in a totally new place.

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
My congregation of Dominican Sisters
inherited this 140 acre farm

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
and there was an intuitive knowing that it could
be a place where all of these new understandings,

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
could perhaps, have an effect.

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
The farm would really have to thrusts, one is
wrestling with the new story of the universe

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
on every level, which we’re trying to understand
it, in terms of the science, in terms of the…

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
of the uh… ecological implications,
the spiritual, religious,

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
cultural implications. And so we have academic
programs, where we’re all learning together

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
and then the other is the agricultural,
I think a central thing of his work

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
is that the earth and the universe
have to become the primary reference

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
for how humans think about themselves.
So what we try to do here, for instance,

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
is say will then the earth in
its soils and in its microbes

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
and in the whole texture of its
development has to be the way we farm.

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
The way we farm isn’t the way humans
think agriculture is, in fact,

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
that’s been the great work here
uh… reversing those perceptions

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
and uh… and with it the economics
on which real integral

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
agriculture can survive as a way for
humans to live and not be so devastating

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
to the soils in the natural world.

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
We have 20 acres of bio dynamically
produced food that is quite extraordinary

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
and its vigor, its integrity and the
immense amount of human interaction

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
that really happens with the plants
and the soils and the microbial life.

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
It’s also a new economic model for
agriculture and so far as we have withdrawn

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
from the market system recognizing that the present
market system is at the heart of the destruction

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
of the small farmer. 180
families are shareholders

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.999
and there’s an agreement between
the farmers and the families

00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.999
that there’s accountability
for the economics.

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.999
The whole new social
arrangement is happening that

00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
I could never have predicted, but is uh…
maybe it’s significant as that vegetables.

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
She’s coming out. She’s pretty. She’s cute.

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.999
I think you’re laying on the potatoes.
We have a committed group of parents

00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.999
who are doing alternative child development, home schooling
with the universe story as part of the curriculum

00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
and a good part of the learning happens here, in the
fields, in the ponds, in the wetlands, in the gardens.

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
The children are becoming
versed in the natural world

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
much more than the typical child.
Yeah, it’s just like star dust.

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
No, I see it down right there. what are you seeing?
I see… How does a child develop as a human being

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
in the proper relationship
and the proper intimacy

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
with a large experience,
that’s available to them

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
and the world about them. The stars,
the Children will never see the star.

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
The light pollution of even our
smaller it is, it won’t let children

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
see in the stars and not to
see the stars as a sole loss.

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
There’s nothing that is

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
so necessary I think,

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
as uh… recovery of the sense of the sacred.
Catastrophic events sometimes

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
can restore a sense awesome that there
are powers gracious than the human.

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
Uh… overwhelming and comprehensive power

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
that strikes a certain amount of fear
and that’s why it’s sometimes at the…

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
at the fear of the Lord
it’s beginning of wisdom.

00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
So the a certain awakening to spiritual
powers is, as one of the necessities

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
for uh… developing a sense of reverence.
And that’s what gives us foreboding

00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
when we go into the real wilderness,

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
it’s frightening experience because he was
an experience a real powers, real powers,

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
just experience psychic
powers and you experience

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
Cosmic powers. And it evokes
all of this in one place to…

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
to get a sense of reverence, I think, is to some
money in the well and become reverent real quick.

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
When I did my studies with Father Thomas

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
I had occasion to uh… move into my own

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
realm of freedom which uh… is a short way of saying, I
had to leave New York and go out to the western regions

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
and when I came to Father Thomas to
first talk about this, he looked at me

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
and he said, \"You go, you stay,

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
you stay, you go, write me
when you wanna come back.\"

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
My friends gathered at a
farewell and I kept saying,

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
\"Simply, I… I don’t think I’m leaving,
I’m… I’m just going for a while.\"

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
Oh, we’ve heard that before and in the
midst of this, came in Father Thomas

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
with a book of poetry of “Tufu” and
in the northern woods of Minnesota,

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
when I had canoed in four days
in the areas that still I marvel

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
at the uh… extent of that journey and
that morning a bear came into our camp,

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
sat with my pack, ripped it open,
took out the book of “Tufu”

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
and opened that book and looked at it

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
and bit it and I have to bear marks in that

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:50.000
William Home translation of
“Tufu.” It causes me to pause.

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
What Thomas Berry is giving us
in his book is a new language,

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
that’s going to enable us to discuss the

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
uh… task to be done in order
to prevent the total trashing

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
of the world which is really… the
earth which is really our life boat.

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
The universe…He would say the universe
is, it’s not a collection of objects,

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
it’s a communion of subjects.

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
When we were having our struggle here
to keep certain lands from developers

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
when I wouldn’t use his idea
and say this is an attitude

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
that’s clear coming from these town
meetings that the surroundings in our

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
local landscape is just an object,
it’s all just up for… for sale and…

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
and you try to get the highest bidder and
that’s all that matters. That idea penetrated,

00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
I can’t tell you how many
people understood that.

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
It’s night upon the river,

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
mid February, Venus shines
out of the wintry sky

00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
from the distance the
palisades(ph) long starkly

00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
over the world. Such a night tend to
mind back into those million years,

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
it took to frame all this.
The ancient meadow

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
itself a new comer here about the embedded
rock with this glacious creations.

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
It’s all her to overwhelm
and for human endurance.

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
We are not for ready memories of
the willow saying are new today,

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
yellowing in the late evening sunlight.

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
It was really a great loss when he… he left Riverdale
and uh… retired, but he was entitled to retire

00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
so now he’s happily doing his thing, writing
letters to the newspaper stand, North Carolina.

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
I… I hope that he can save some of those

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
roads from going in.

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
I frequently say North Carolina

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
come home to yourself, we have some
mountains, we have the fertile region,

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
we have the coastal plan,
we have (inaudible) region,

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
we have a very rich settled bioregions.
We need an internal economy,

00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
are we so incompetent or we cannot
create a viable economy of our own,

00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
why do we had progressively
destroy our inner economy

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
and become more and more dependent

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
on the exploitive hallmark or the K.
Marx economy,

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
to tie us into that and to rip
us out of our own native setting

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
and to carry this out by creating this

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
vast system of roads and
highways, and all that.

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
Development of communities, such as North
Carolina, it never ever pays for itself.

00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
We should be creating our music,

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
our art that brought you, we should be
educating our children in relationship

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
to their natural religion.

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
If we don’t have certain outer experiences,
we don’t have certain inner experiences

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.999
so at least we don’t have
them in such a profound way.

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.999
We need the sun, the moon,
the stars, the rivers

00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:39.999
and the mountains, the… the tree, the
flowers, the birds, sound of the birds

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
the uh… fish in the sea, umm… all of this

00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.999
evokes something in our inner
world, evokes a world of mystery,

00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.999
it evokes the world the sacred and gives
us that sense above all, a mystery.

00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:59.999
And this can be said to
be the cosmic liturgy.

00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:04.999
The universe itself

00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:09.999
is a kind of a sacred liturgy and humans

00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:14.999
become religious in the
sense by joining at the

00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:19.999
religion of the universe and
so that… apart from that

00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.999
our souls ripple, if we lived on
the Moon, our imagination would be

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.999
as flat as the moon, our emotion
would be dull, our sense are divine

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.999
would reflect the lunar landscape.

00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.999
In my view, the human came into existence

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.999
at the advance stage of the
Cenozoic period to bear the burden

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
and responsibility of human intelligence,

00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
he needed a magnificent world of beauty in
order to give us the healing that would need.

00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
It’s a greatest and
deepest tragedy of losing

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
the splendor of the other world
is that we will always have

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
an inner demand for we
genetically coded to exist

00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
in the world of beauty.

00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
Reading Thomas Berry is
an absolute liberation.

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
I didn’t really understand how
deeply I was repressing my own truth

00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.999
and my own love of the natural world. It… it
was an antidote to my feeling of hopelessness

00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.999
and nobody really cared except environmentalists
and here’s a theologian who cared right?

00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.999
And who could link the spiritual with… with the
natural, we’ve got culture and nature rejoined again

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
because we have this very deadly illusion
that we don’t need the natural world.

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
And I mean, you and I, we can’t take our
next breath without the natural world.

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:58.000
[music]

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The universe is a communion of
subjects not a collection of objects.

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And we have this from our first
awakening to the universe,

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you first impress when you
see a flower, or see a tree,

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or see a sunset, or seeing the ocean,
or see anything in the natural world,

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your first impress is a
communion experience.

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How wonderful is this and to live in the
universe where there’s a sun and the heavens,

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where there’s uh… so many wonderful creatures
of Earth, where the song of the birds

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and the butterflies, and
the cicada in the evening,

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what is all this? Obviously, it’s not
the collection of objects to be used,

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obviously it’s a world to be venerated.

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It’s a world… world to the communed with,
to be present, to be and delighted in

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and together to have a certain
experience, it might be called

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ecstatic experience.

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There is one experience that I think

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it has uh… a really deep influence in somebody’s life,
it’s something that reminded about 10 years old.

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I saw a meadow and I saw it first

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in spring time, in early may.

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And it was filled with wild lilies.
They’re outside together with the sounds

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of the insects or they were the
crickets, there are birds.

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All of this somehow struck me in such a way

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that ever since that… that meadow has
become my norm of reality and value.

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A good economy is what makes
that meadow to survive.

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A good politics protects the meadow.

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A good religion is what enables me to
understand the deep mystery in the meadow.

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[music]

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Thomas’s early experience of the
beauty of the meadow is reflected

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in the dream of the earth, where he
describes Dantes meeting with Beatrice.

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One of the most difficult things
in the ‘Divine Comedy’ is when

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Dante after his journey
through in the inferno,

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purgatorio, he meets Beatrice once again,

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He first met Beatrice when she
was 8 years old, and he was 9.

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This was the great inspiration of his life,

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the inspiration the Divine Comedy.
It’s supporting that meetings because

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at his coming home to himself like to

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that experience that he had that inspired

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the deepest nobility of this nature.

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And which inspired the aesthetic
grandeur of his writing.

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It was just that I think
we need to experience.

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When we see something of wilderness,

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I saying that there’s a sense
of the tragic dimension

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that exist on the earth, but that there
is realms of beauty still survive.

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It needs people to meet in a sense,

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to meet in a sense with Beatrice

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because this is a way in which when we
come to ourselves and come to the divine,

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come to intimacy, once again.

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And the reason why this is so important is

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because to change the situation
we are now, it’s going to take

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an awesome amount of determination,
a lot of insight and endurance.

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We must do this, by means of story

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and shared dream experience.

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The dream drive the action, we have to dream
of a better future, of a different future

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because it’s the dream that creates.

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I think constantly of the future, I
think constantly of the children

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and of the needs that all the
children go into the future,

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as a single sacred community,
the children of the trees,

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the children of the birds,
the children of the animals,

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the children of the insects, all the child.

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There’s no future for the human children,
if there’s no future for the children

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of the… of the life forms.

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[music]

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The child awakens to universe,

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the mind of the child to a world of wonder,

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imagination to a world of beauty,

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emotions to world event in the sea.

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It takes a universe to make a child
both in outer form and in a spirit.

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It takes a universe to educate a child.

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It takes a universe to fulfill a child.

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[music]

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We live inside a story.

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[music]

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We’re just getting a glimpse of what that
means to be part of an expanding universe

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and part of the original Stardust.

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[music]

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No matter where you are in the universe, you see the
same universe that’s the… the basic acceptance of

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science as it exists in present time.

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And no matter where you are,

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you see the universe receding from you.
So you run the

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camera backwards, it
will bring you back to a

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uh… a point that’s the origin point

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of the universe over you.

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That’s why I know that I’m not
myself without everything else.

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[music]