Dream of the Earth (A Powerful Vision)

I have had to add this reading since I keep sharing this one in particular with so many people.  I feel there is a great need at this time to shift our human-centric focus of how we relate to our world and universe to one of an expanded understanding of the Earth and its majestic dance of multiplicities of form. A reading concise and moving as this you will rarely find. We are now in the post modern and have been cut off in some significant way from direct and experiential knowledge we all once enjoyed with nature. What Thomas Berry speaks of here is Magic in the truest sense of the word.

Thomas Berry, C.P. (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 deep ecology and “ecospirituality” he is famous for proposing 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 as demonstrated in the Introduction to his book, The Christian Future and the Fate of the Earth.  Author Michael Colebrook describes two key elements in Thomas Berry’s thinking: “Firstly, the primary status of the universe. The universe is, ‘the only self-referential reality in the phenomenal world. It is the only text without context. Everything else has to be seen in the context of the universe’. The second element is the significance of story, and in particular the universe as story. ‘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.”

For more resources on Thomas Berry see Wikipedia

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