The Dream of the Earth Audiobook | Thomas Berry | 1988

The Dream of the Earth Audiobook | Thomas Berry | Audible.com.au



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The Dream of the Earth
By: Thomas Berry
Narrated by: Thomas Berry
Length: 2 hrs and 52 mins
Abridged Audiobook
Release date: 13-11-2019
Language: English
Publisher: Phoenix Books
4.3 out of 5 stars4.3 (3 ratings)


Non-member price: $9.71or 1 Credit
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Publisher's Summary


Drawing upon the wisdom of thinkers from Buddha and Plato to Teilhard de Chardin and E. F. Schumacher, from ancient Chinese philosophy and Native American shamanism to contemporary astrophysics, Berry forges a balanced, deeply felt declaration of planetary independence from the sociological, psychological, and intellectual conditioning that threatens the death of nature, offering a path that will avert ecological catastrophe and move our traumatized planet toward health.

Berry builds his case on a comprehensive review of the history of ideas, and he points toward a transformation of consciousness that is needed, if mankind and the planet are to survive. The Dream of the Earth provides the insights, inspiration, and ethical guidance for us to move beyond exploitation and disengagement and begin a restorative, creative relationship with the natural world.
©1988 Sierra Club Books (P)1992, 2019 Audio Literature, Phoenix Books
PhilosophyEcologyShow More






What listeners say about The Dream of the EarthAverage Customer 

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Overall
4.5 out of 5 stars4.3 out of 5.0
Performance
3.5 out of 5 stars3.7 out of 5.0
Story
4.5 out of 5 stars4.7 out of 5.0

Overall
5 out of 5 stars
Performance
5 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars

C. Haubner
14-03-2021

Powerful book

This is a wonderful book. It’s dense and intense, but it provides invaluable insight to our current condition as humans. A must read.
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Essays discuss the Earth's evolution, our changing relationship with the planet, the ethics of ecology, and the future of the world

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sierra Club Books (1 September 1988)

Customer Reviews: 4.6 out of 5 stars    52 ratings

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5 star 79%

The Dream of the Earth
The Dream of the Earth
byThomas Berry

52 global ratings | 25 global reviews
From Australia
There are 0 reviews and 0 ratings from Australia
From other countries

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Mark Adams
5.0 out of 5 stars Great!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 February 2016
Verified Purchase
Great!
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Anita M. Nicholson
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on 3 October 2017
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A true visionary. Berry is remarkable!
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stew
5.0 out of 5 stars Great thanks. Got here in good time too
Reviewed in Canada on 23 June 2017
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Great thanks. Got here in good time too.
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Redhawk
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on 9 December 2016
Verified Purchase
love the writing!! a read for everyone.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommend!
Reviewed in Canada on 16 August 2016
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Absolutely Fantastic!! Thomas Berry speaks with so much depth!! I am in awe!
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Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars The best message I got from this book was that all ...
Reviewed in the United States on 2 November 2015
Verified Purchase
Almost done with this book and although it has some inspiring notes, I found it to be rather repetitious throughout.
It kind of goes in circles about how humans are damaging the earth and how we need to do something about it.

The best message I got from this book was that all the elements of our cultures and personalities come from nature. We basically create our consciousness from our perception of animals, plants, smells, etc....this is a powerful thought because the more species we lose each year limits and basically shrinks our consciousness. The less there is to perceive, the less our cultures can evolve.
12 people found this helpful
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Nancy Flinchbaugh
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful prose, a plea for the earth
Reviewed in the United States on 16 September 2012
Verified Purchase
Thomas Berry writes beautiful prose, in this incredibly vibrant plea for our struggling planet. If you've never read Berry, this would be a good way to start. He will awaken your admiration for creation and call you out to enter into this, our Eco Age. I hope you will join the ever growing community of those who are working to build a better, sustainable future for the People of Earth. This, he says, is our "Great Work." It's amazing to me that this book, written almost 25 years ago now, explains the challenges of our reality. A Catholic priest, who dedicated his life to this work, lives on in his remarkable writing.
3 people found this helpful
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Bugs
5.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Guide To Earth/Universe Connectivity
Reviewed in the United States on 13 February 2004
Verified Purchase
Thomas Berry has put together in this one book what a thousand other writers have attempted and that is: a complete format for human perception of reality that should and can pervade through all our earthly activities, esp. religion, politics and economy. Let Earth and it's biolgical processes teach and guide us to a rational, sustainable, regenerative, healthy existence.

There are many potent passages all through this work and I picked out one that I felt was inclusive of the gist of the book.

..."This universe itself, but especially the planet Earth, needs to be experienced as the primary healer, primary commercial establishment, and primary lawgiver for all that exists within this life community. The basic spirituality communicated by the natural world can also be considered as normative for the future ecological age."- Page 120


This is an excellent treatise on reverence for the creative life forces that sustain us and treat us daily to a plethora of interactive life processes and our need to acknowledge this gift by treating it with the awe and respect it deserves.
48 people found this helpful
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Annie Dragonfly
5.0 out of 5 stars The Epitome of Deep Ecology
Reviewed in the United States on 26 September 2009
Verified Purchase
This is THE book on deep ecology. It is beautifully written, requiring slow thoughtful reading - I found myself chewing each sentence 22 times, wishing I could write out each thought and pin it on the wall to consider in every waking moment. In this masterpiece of environmentalism and spirituality, Berry tells how we got Earth into this mess, and how our collective thinking must change to save our one and only Home. It cannot be said any better than this. While I try to rotate other books so as not to hoard wisdom, this cherished book will stay in my library permanently and be read again and again.
7 people found this helpful
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Jim
5.0 out of 5 stars Berry knew we are Nature.
Reviewed in the United States on 15 September 2011
Verified Purchase
Thomas Berry knew we had to work with Nature itself rather than dictating our needs to Nature. A new book, The Awakened Earth, teaches us how to form a partnership with Nature to heal environments out of balance. It does what Berry said we must do, listen to Nature, then co-create solutions with Nature to rebalance and heal stressed environments. Indigenous people as well as American Indians knew this and did listen as they saw they were part of Nature itself, not a dominator of Nature as many now behave. Berry's principles are realized in The Awakened Earth. (It too, is for sale on Amazon as well as its own website.)
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The Dream of the Earth by Thomas Berry

 4.20  ·   Rating details ·  302 ratings  ·  42 reviews

This landmark work, first published by Sierra Club Books in 1988, has established itself as a foundational volume in the ecological canon. In it, noted cultural historian Thomas Berry provides nothing less than a new intellectual-ethical framework for the human community by positing planetary well-being as the measure of all human activity.

Drawing on the wisdom of Western philosophy, Asian thought, and Native American traditions, as well as contemporary physics and evolutionary biology, Berry offers a new perspective that recasts our understanding of science, technology, politics, religion, ecology, and education. He shows us why it is important for us to respond to the Earth’s need for planetary renewal, and what we must do to break free of the “technological trance” that drives a misguided dream of progress. Only then, he suggests, can we foster mutually enhancing human-Earth relationships that can heal our traumatized global biosystem. (less)

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Showing 1-30

 Average rating4.20  ·  Rating details ·  302 ratings  ·  42 reviews

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Emily Crow

Apr 15, 2017Emily Crow rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, read-in-2017, nature-writing, modern-life

It took me forever to get through this relatively short book, due to both the dry, academic prose and the sheer number of interesting ideas per page. Although it is a challenging read--and, in some ways, a bit dated--it is definitely worth the attention of anyone with a serious interest in environmental philosophy.

The core of the message is simple: We absolutely have to find a new way of relating to the earth, or we will destroy it, and thus destroy ourselves. All of our current modes of being--in economics, religion, science, politics--are not only insufficient, but contributing to the problem.

Or as Barry puts it: "Our secular, rational, industrial society, with its amazing scientific insight and technological skills, has established the first radically anthropocentric society and has thereby broken the primary law of the universe, the law that every component member of the universe should be integral with every other member of the universe and that the primary norm of reality and of value is the universe community itself in its various forms of expression, especially as realized on the planet Earth."

I enjoyed how he broke down his argument into different segments, such as how science and commerce and our own historical world view (the latter going back to the Middle Ages in the beginnings of this pathology, which provided a new and interesting perspective for me), but the most convincing argument was, for me, the spiritual one:

"We should be clear about what happens when we destroy the living forms of this planet. The first consequence is that we destroy modes of divine presence. If we have a wonderful sense of the divine, it is because we live amid such awesome magnificence." Yes, this!!! A million times over!

I did find it interesting that, although the author was a Catholic priest of the Passionist order, his religious views are quite nonconformist and would probably upset many main stream Christians. He believes that the emphasis on personal salvation and the insistence that we live in a fallen world detract from the experience of our connection with natural world--the sort of nature mysticism of traditional Native American religions, for example. He shows how this view helped to lead to the industrial plundering of the earth (sorry about all the quotes in this review, but Berry just says things so much better):

"Just as the doctrine of divine transcendence took away the pervasive divine presence to the natural world, so the millennial vision of a blessed future left all present modes of existence in a degraded status. All things were in an unholy condition. Everything needed to be transformed. This meant that anything unused was to be used if the very purpose of its existence was to be realized. Nothing in its natural state was acceptable."

And:

"The Christian world is the world of the city. Its concerns are primarily supernatural. The rural world is the world of the pagan. The natural world is to be kept at a distance as a seductive mode of being."

Actually, I would be extremely interested to read a thoughtful, ecologically aware Christian response to these arguments, as my gut instinct says that Berry's view would be considered heretical, and yet I know that many Christians are concerned about the environment. I would hate for the Ann Coulters and Sarah Palins of this world to drown them out. And yet Coulter and Palin are obviously building upon a dynamic--and extremely destructive--cultural foundation when they so vociferously insist that the earth exists only for our consumption. I wonder what Berry would say about them if he were still alive today.

I copied down pages upon pages of quotes from this book--the author's insights were just that amazing. It's tempting to keep sharing more of them, but instead I'll recommend that everyone who loves the earth read this book. My one quibble with it (besides the stilted prose) was that I found it to be a complete downer (probably one of the reasons I could only read it in small doses). Writing in 1988, Berry seems to believe that we were on the cusp of a new ecological paradigm. If anything, the opposite is true. Every day I am bombarded with depressing news about more and more drilling, mining, fracking, and logging carried out on public lands. Entire mountain tops are being blown sky-high in Appalachia for coal production. The keystone XL pipeline has just been approved by one of the most aggressively exploitative presidents in history. Native rights are being trampled at Standing Rock and elsewhere. It is enough to make one weep, and I sometimes do. Unfortunately, some thirty years later, Berry's Dream of the Earth seems just that, a lovely dream that never came true. (less)

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Erik Akre

Mar 14, 2016Erik Akre rated it liked it

Recommends it for: visionary ecologists; shamanic personalities

Shelves: ecology, human-ecology

My first impressions of this book were that it is not particularly "well-written." I had a hard time gelling with Berry's writing style, and I never did quite get the hang of it. It had the feel of being second-rate. I shouldn't say that first off, but there it is.

That said, I must also say that its ideas are powerful and compelling. I will explain by listing the ways it inspired me, the things it inspired me to learn more about:

1. the sequence and detail of the galactic cosmology

2. the sequential phases of human development, from Paleolithic to ecological (into which we are currently transitioning)

3. the great classical cultures of the world and their achievements

4. the scientific-technological phase of human development itself, considering power, harms, helps, and ramifications

5. the possibilities of the new ecological age

6. the rediscovery of foundations for human values

The book provoked a lot of interest in the above, and there are many, many references to further reading in these and other areas. If for no other reason, these inspirations are worth the read. In the midst of everything else in my life, it took me years to explore these things further, but I have in my way, and I still do. I owe something to Berry for the motivation I still have.

In the end, Berry concludes that we need more visionary consciousness and less blind reliance on reason. This conclusion ties things together well. It is the "shamanic personalities" that must be the guides as we move forward to a new relationship with the earth. (less)

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Andrea McDowell

Feb 05, 2013Andrea McDowell rated it it was ok

Shelves: green, life-is-too-short

I have tried so hard to like Thomas Berry.

I give up. I can't do it. Dense, unreadable prose based on the sketchiest types of half-evidence, stitched together with such slender chains of reasoning that a good sneeze could rip it apart. Nice ideas. Lovely philosophy. A wonderful world would result if, indeed, there were any basis for his proposals or if they were implementable by animals with the sorts of brains human beings have. But they're not, and I can't waste one more second of my life believing that there is anything useful to be learned from a book that makes the argument that there were pre-partriarchal women-ruled societies in which the environment was treated well. Mr. Berry, you meant well, and I respect you as an ally; but to all his successors, I beg of you, please sully yourself with some form of actual evidence, and stop confusing "fact" with "someone else's opinion that you found in print." (less)

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Eddie Black

Jan 05, 2009Eddie Black rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

Shelves: pagan, philosophy, environment

We need more voices like Thomas Berry.

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Sev

Nov 07, 2013Sev rated it really liked it

Shelves: library

It's strange reading a fervent environmental call to action almost thirty years after its publication, sitting in a world worse off than the one which inspired its writing. An important book. (less)

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Ingrid

Apr 05, 2018Ingrid rated it it was amazing

Very insightful ideas regarding the connections with our planet. I found Thomas Berry's explanations for the dream of the earth and the solutions to our current ecological crisis innovative and encouraging. ...more

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Elizabeth

Sep 26, 2009Elizabeth rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: psychologists and adult devt

now I own it

from the library computer:

Publishers Weekly Reviews

This first volume in a new series, the Sierra Club Nature and Natural Philosophy Library, explores human-earth relations and seeks a new, non-anthropocentric approach to the natural world. According to cultural historian Berry, our immediate danger is not nuclear war but industrial plundering; our entire society, he argues, is trapped in a closed cycle of production and consumption. Berry points out that our perception of the earth is the product of cultural conditioning, and that most of us fail to think of ourselves as a species but rather as national, ethnic, religious or economic groups. Describing education as ``a process of cultural coding somewhat parallel to genetic coding,'' he proposes a curriculum based on awareness of the earth. He discusses ``patriarchy'' as a new interpretation of Western historical development, naming four patriachies that have controlled Western history, becoming progressively destructive: the classical empires, the ecclesiastical establishment, the nation-state and the modern corporation. We must reject partial solutions and embrace profound changes toward a ``biocracy'' that will heal the earth, urges the author who defines problems and causes with eloquence. (October) Copyright 1988 Cahners Business Information.

(less)

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Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership

Dec 22, 2010Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership rated it it was amazing

Shelves: the-top-50-sustainability-books

One of Cambridge Sustainability's Top 50 Books for Sustainability, as voted for by our alumni network of over 3,000 senior leaders from around the world. To find out more, click here.

The Dream of the Earth is a collection of essays which all advance a deeply spiritual and ecological interpretation of the world, its current woes and potential solutions. Berry believes we understand and interpret the world and our role within it based on our 'story of the universe', our dream or world-view. The story is the source of a society's collective psyche and not only explains the past, but also guides our future. While other animals have their behaviour embedded in their DNA, we humans need stories to find our way and understand what to do.

The underlying theme of the book is that our vision, or dream, of progress has brought a lot of good, but is now sowing the seeds of its own destruction. This is because we have lost our connection to the planet, a connection that has existed since ancient times and today remains only with some indigenous communities. Our story has become corrupted, or empty of deep meaning. (less)

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Wendy Babiak

Sep 28, 2009Wendy Babiak rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

Shelves: books-that-made-me-a-better-person

Thomas Berry, a monastic who chose to use his solitude to study everything from comparative religion and philosophy to agricultural production and particle physics, has synthesized his wide and deep knowledge in this volume with a thoughtfulness rare in this or any age. The book is a call to awaken to a new and more productive geopolitical paradigm involving a recognition of the rights of the earth and all its inhabitants. Reading it is like being blessed with a new set of eyes with which to see the world. (less)

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Jonathan Wichmann

Jun 16, 2012Jonathan Wichmann rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

Recommended to Jonathan by: Bill Plotkin

Wonderful to read -- he writes with the language of a philosopher, though I think it's clearer and more direct than most people think of as philosophy. I found it beautiful and inspiring. Probably my favorite part is that he reminds us every three pages that humans are closing down the basic life systems of the planet. Awful, but it's surprisingly nice to hear someone say it how it is.

His ideas can be challenging, but I think they're right on. (less)

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Joshua

Jun 13, 2009Joshua added it

Shelves: hippie, summer09

I would rate this as a better book that "The Great Work", if only because it is more prescient (written a decade earlier), as it contains all of the main ideas, developed sufficiently enough.

I am considering using Chpt 8, "The American College in the Ecological Age" (pp. 89-108) as a reading for a freshman seminar discussion. It is as timely now as it was 20 years ago.

...more

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David Weber

Feb 12, 2012David Weber rated it it was amazing

Berry's eyes, mind, and heart were wide open. He could see the connectivity of everything, he had the ability to convey the unity of all things eloquently, and thus he enabled us to know better the love of the Other in which all must fully live, move, and have our being.. (less)

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JeanAnn

Aug 28, 2020JeanAnn rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

Shelves: morning-coffee

“We can understand this Peace of Earth, however, only if we understand that the earth is a single community composed of all its geological, biological, and human components. The Peace of Earth is Indivisible. In this context the nations have a referent outside themselves for resolving their difficulties. The earth fulfills this role of mediator in several ways. First, the earth is a single organic reality that must survive in its integrity if it is to support any nation on the earth. To save the earth is a necessity for every nation. No part of the earth in its essential functioning can be the exclusive possession or concern of any nation. The air cannot be nationalized or privatized; it must circulate everywhere on the planet to fulfill its life giving function anywhere on the planet. It must be available for the nonhuman as well as for the human lifeforms if it is to sustain human life. So it is with the waters on the earth. They must circulate throughout the planet if they are to benefit any of the lifeforms on the planet.” (less)

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Ann

Jul 16, 2017Ann rated it really liked it  ·  review of another edition

Shelves: conservation

This collection of essays broadly addresses the ecological despair facing all the Earth, how humans are causing this despair and the ways in which it will impinge on human existence. Rather than offer specific analysis or solution, Berry presents some themes of underpinning philosophy arising from Christianity, Western culture and economics in particular that have lead to this state of despair and changes or new directions for creating a viable future. He connects the human past, in historical, cosmological, and genetic senses, as a starting point for this future. These essays are worth a consideration on all counts. (less)

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Walt

Aug 30, 2018Walt rated it really liked it

This is a very interesting set of essays, outlining the patterns of life in the world, demonstrating the problems associated with modern cosmology, and proposing a new cosmology. While some essays have become outdated as our understanding of evolution and anthropology changes, the majority have become even more relevant and important to the situation we find ourselves in. The need for a story which integrates us into the community of life on Earth has only grown since this was written. I would recommend this to anyone concerned with spiritual or ecological issues facing the world. (less)

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Emma

Sep 29, 2020Emma rated it liked it

"As Chief Seattle once said of us and our cities: 'When the last Red Man shall have perished, and the mystery of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone.'" (less)

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Eileen

Dec 17, 2019Eileen rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

© 1988 ***½. Early book on the subject of ecology and the place of humans in the biosphere. Explains well how a bioregion works as a unit and how all life is dependent on humans working together with the natural forces of the earth. Acknowledges the dignity and respect due to the planet as a whole, and to the awesome diversity of life present here and nowhere else for light-years around.

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Aidan Owen

Nov 16, 2017Aidan Owen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: mysticism, spirituality, 2017, contemplative-ecology

Extraordinary. If you haven't read this book, read it NOW. If you have, read it again. It changed the way I see myself as a part of the universe and not separate from it, and has helped me to articulate my own vocation. Absolutely essential reading. (less)

 

Joe Moreno

Jan 15, 2018Joe Moreno rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

A theological basis for environmentalism. Great book!

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Autumn

Apr 27, 2018Autumn rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorite-books

This is one of the most powerful books I have ever read, shining light on humanity’s place in the cosmos and our role in manifesting a world in which all things thrive in communion and love.

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Joyce

Aug 13, 2018Joyce rated it it was amazing

A thoughtful view of where we are on planet Earth, how we got here and what we need to do in order to save our beautiful Mother.

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Martha

Jan 22, 2019Martha rated it liked it

Affirmed my view of the living universe. It was depressing that the warnings about species extinction and the destruction of our home were issued in the 80s! Have we passed a point of no return?

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Brian

Aug 18, 2019Brian rated it really liked it

Read this so long ago I've forgotten when, and the details. ...more

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S Holthaus

Feb 12, 2017S Holthaus rated it really liked it

Relevant for anyone interested in environmental issues

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Lauren

Dec 19, 2014Lauren marked it as abandoned

Fuck it. I've had this out from the library for probably months now and I'm not any closer to finishing it. It wasn't terrible, in fact many of his ideas were very inspiring, but also I just found it to be pretty samey compared to similar books I've read or skimmed through. Which reflects a thousand times worse on them than it does The Dream of the Earth, TDotE being very influential in its field and kind of the jump start for all the Green politics, philosophy, religion etc that you see today that spawned such similar books.

I feel pretty peeved at these successors, actually. Like, when Thomas Berry asked people to recycle I'm p sure he didn't mean that with regards to his own work. Say something new, you hacks. Or at least talk about the parts that haven't aged well in this book. Does the world really need another self-indulgent chapter about your grudge against technology? No. Really, no. Thomas Berry was a visionary and I realise the ideas and questions he poses have no simple answers, but you could at least try to answer them. Or bring new ideas to the table. I'd prefer an attempt at answers, frankly, because so many books of this kind are filled with too much hand-wringing over capitalism and the state of our environment and not much attention given to anything but the same vague, trotted out solutions. Sometimes I think these authors would have a better impact on the environment if they just didn't publish their books in the first place. Save all that paper and resources for a book that isn't pretending to give a shit. It'll be much less hypocritical that way.

So yeah, I'm regretful that I couldn't finish this. Maybe it would have been the same old echo chamber stuff anyway, but if you're going to read it at all it might as well come from the person who wrote it first and, in all likelihood, best.

Oh well. (less)

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Nicholas Brink

Nov 21, 2015Nicholas Brink rated it it was amazing

The Dream of the Earth has become very central to my own writing. Berry's belief that the avenue to become one with the Earth is through dreaming, waking visions and regaining our shamanic personality I believe is most directly gained through ecstatic trance for which I am a certified instructor and about what I have been writing. Berry makes it clear that where we go wrong in healing the Earth is our belief that we are superior to everything of the Earth and have dominion of the Earth. We forget that we are dependent upon all that is of the Earth and have much to learn from all life, all flora and fauna. All other life have powers that we do not have and in those ways are superior to us. When realizing this, how can we place ourselves superior to all other life and the culmination of evolution? We can't, we are no better than and need to experience ourselves as one with all other life on Earth. (less)

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Frank Aaskov

Jan 18, 2012Frank Aaskov rated it it was ok

I initially decided to read this book as it was on a list of most important environmental book out something. However I was really disappointed.

The author outlines where he believes there is a disconnect between current philosophical thought and environmentalism / green philosophy, which is an noble task. But he gets lost in loose rambling, vague criticisms, and his love of mysticism. Often he states that we should respect earth/plants/animals/etc for their mystic nature (??), and his causal relationships and explanations are difficult to follow. He furthermore puts great emphasis on theories that even at the time of writing (late 1980s) were disputed such as the population bomb.

Overall, I don't really get why this made any list. It might have made a wave in some parts of the environmental movement when published, but it has certainly not stood the test of time. (less)

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scherzo♫

Apr 22, 2013scherzo♫ rated it really liked it

Shelves: mundane-fic

p.30 "The ecological vision that we are proposing is the only contexte that is consistent with the evolutionary processes that brought the earth and all its living beings into that state of flourescence that existed prior to the industrial age. Because this earlier situation made serious demands upon the human for the benefits given, the industrial age was invented to avoid the return due for the benefits given. The burdens imposed upon the human in its natural setting, generally referred to as the human condition, established a situation unacceptable to an anthropocentric community with its deep psychic resentment against any such demands imposed upon it, hence the entire effort of the industrial society to transform the natural world into total subservience." (less)

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Kate

Jun 11, 2016Kate rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, library-books

It was a redundant read for me. This book makes for a good introduction for those who are unaware of the why and how the human communities across the globe are screwed, but only vaguely. Too many references to other books and not enough direct quotations from said books to make the message of the book as a whole stronger. I wanted to know why those books were important, not just that they are deemed important by the author.

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“The Dream of the Earth” by Thomas Berry

written by springmagazine

Published on January 12, 2020

https://thespringmagazine.com/2020/01/12/the-dream-of-the-earth-by-thomas-berry/

When the Catholic priest Thomas Berry died in 2009, obituaries were not sure what to call him. “Cultural historian” was the preferred title. “Theologian” didn’t quite encompass his work, and he had preferred the term “geologian” instead. Born in Greensboro in 1914, Berry studied Asian languages and religions, Native American culture, founded the graduate program on religions at Fordham University, among other studies and work throughout his life — all in the search of a spirituality that combines religion and nature.

In “The Great Work,” Berry wrote about his profound spiritual experience at a meadow when he was 11 years old. The experience was the basis for his spiritual development and intellectual thought for the rest of his life. “Whatever preserves and enhances this meadow in the natural cycles of its transformations is good, what is opposed to this meadow or negates it is not good,” he wrote.

Berry’s writing is soft yet powerful. It flows, and is difficult to quote and pull from. You end up reading the whole book but not being able to describe what you just read, and not wanting to either, but instead just to let the writing settle. The writing flows gently like water or like a breeze, and you delight in his love of the word “numinous.” 

Here is an excerpt from “The Dream of the Earth,” by Thomas Berry, published in 1988.

We are returning to our native place after a long absence, meeting once again with our kin in the earth community. For too long we have been away somewhere, entranced with our industrial world of wires and wheels, concrete and steel, and our unending highways, where we race back and forth in continual frenzy.

The world of life, of spontaneity, the world of dawn and sunset and glittering stars in the dark night heavens, the world of wind and rain, of meadow flowers and flowing streams, of hickory and oak and maple and spruce and pineland forests, the world of desert sand and prairie grasses, and within all this the eagle and the hawk, the mockingbird and the chickadee, the deer and the wolf and the beer, the coyote, the raccoon, the whale and the seal, and the salmon returning upstream to spawn — all this, the wilderness world recently rediscovered with heightened emotional sensitivity, is an experience not far from that of Dante meeting Beatrice at the end of the Purgatorio, where she descends amid a cloud of blossoms. It was a long wait for Dante, so aware of his infidelities, yet struck anew and inwardly “pierced,” as when, hardly out of his childhood, he had first seen Beatrice. The “ancient flame” was lit again in the depths of his being. In that meeting, Dante is describing not only a personal experience, but the experience of the entire human community at the moment of reconciliation with the divine after the long period of alienation and human wandering away from the true center.

Something of this feeling of intimacy we now experience as we recover our presence within the earth community. This is something more than working out a viable economy, something more than ecology, more even than Deep Ecology, is able to express. This is a sense of presence, a realization that the earth community is a wilderness community that will not be bargained with; nor will it simply be studied or examined or made an object of any kind; nor will it be domesticated or trivialized as a setting for vacation indulgence, except under duress and by oppressions which it cannot escape. When this does take place in an abusive way, a vengeance awaits the human, for when the other living species are violated so extensively, the human itself is imperiled.

The Dream of the EarthIf 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, our sense of gratitude, our willingness to recognize the sacred character of habitat, our capacity for the awesome, for the numinous quality of every earthly reality. We have even forgotten our primordial capacity for language at the elementary level of song and dance, wherein we share our existence with the animals and with all natural phenomena. Witness how the Pueblo Indians of the Rio Grande enter into the eagle dance, the buffalo dance, and the deer dance; how the Navajo become intimate with the larger community through their dry-paintings and their chantway ceremonies; how the peoples of the Northwest express their identity through their totem animals; how the Hopi enter into communication with desert rattlesnakes in their ritual dances. This mutual presence finds expression also in poetry and in story form, especially in the trickster stories of the Plains Indians in which Coyote performs his never-ending magic. Such modes of presence to the living world we still carry deep within ourselves, beyond all the suppressions and even the antagonism imposed by our cultural traditions.

Even within our own Western traditions at our greater moments of expression, we find this presence, as in Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, and even in the diurnal and seasonal liturgies. The dawn and evening liturgies, especially, give expression to the natural phenomena in their numinous qualities. Also, in the bestiaries of the medieval period, we find a special mode of drawing the animal world into the world of human converse. In their symbolisms and especially in the moral qualities associated with the various animals, we find a mutual revelatory experience. These animal stories have a playfulness about them, something of a common language, a capacity to care for each other. Yet these movements toward intensive sharing with the natural world were constantly turned aside by a spiritual aversion, even by a sense that humans were inherently cut off from any true sharing of life. At best they were drawn into a human context in some subservient way, often in a derogatory way, as when we projected our own vicious qualities onto such animals such as the wolf, the rat, the snake, the worm, and the insects. We seldom entered their wilderness world with true empathy.

Thomas_Berry

Berry

The change has begun, however, in every phase of human activity, in all our professions and institutions. Greenpeace on the sea and Earth First! on the land are asserting our primary loyalties to the community of earth. The poetry of Gary Snyder communicates something of the “wild sacred” quality of the earth. In his music Paul Winter is responding to the cry of the wolf and the song of the whale. Roger Tory Peterson has brought us intimately into the world of the birds. Joy Adamson has entered into the world of the lions of Africa; Dian Fossey the social world of the gentle gorilla. John Lilly has been profoundly absorbed into the consciousness of the dolphin. Farley Mowat and Barry Lopez have come to an intimate understanding of the gray wolf of North America. Others have learned the dance language of the bees and the songs of the crickets.

What is fascinating about these intimate associations with various living forms of the earth is that we are establishing not only an acquaintance with the general life and emotions of the various species, but also an intimate rapport, even an affective relationship, with individual animals within their wilderness context. Personal names are given to individual whales. Indeed, individual wild animals are entering into history. This can be observed in the burial of Digit, the special gorilla friend of Dian Fossey’s. Fossey’s own death by human assault gives abundant evidence that if we are often imperiled in the wilderness context of the animals, we are also imperiled in the disturbed conditions of what we generally designate as civilized society.

Just now one of the significant historical roles of the primal people of the world is not simply to sustain their own traditions, but to call the entire civilized world back to a more authentic mode of being. Our only hope is in a renewal of those primordial experiences out of which the shaping of our more sublime human qualities could take place. While our own experiences can never again have the immediacy or the compelling quality that characterized this earlier period, we are experiencing a postcritical naiveté, a type of presence to the earth and all its inhabitants that includes, and also transcends, the scientific understanding that now is available to us from these long years of observation and reflection.

Fortunately we have in the native peoples of the North American continent what must surely be considered in the immediacy of its experience, in its emotional sensitivities, and in its modes of expressions, one of the most integral traditions of human intimacy with the earth, with the entire range of natural phenomena, and with the many living beings which constitute the life community. Even minimal contact with the native peoples of this continent is an exhilarating experience in itself, an experience that is heightened rather than diminished by the disintegrating period through which they themselves have passed. In their traditional mystique of the earth, they are emerging as one of our surest guides into a viable future.

Throughout their period of dissolution, when so many tribes have been extinguished, the surviving peoples have manifested what seems to be an indestructible psychic orientation toward the basic structure and functioning of the earth, despite all our efforts to impose on them our own aggressive attitude toward the natural world. In our postcritical naiveté we are now in a period when we become capable once again of experiencing the immediacy of life, the entrancing presence to the natural phenomena about us. It is quite interesting to realize that our scientific story of the universe is giving us a new appreciation for these earlier stories that come down to us through peoples who have continued their existence outside the constraints of our civilizations.

Presently we are returning to the primordial community of the universe, the earth, and all living beings. Each has its own voice, its role, its power over the whole. But, most important, each has its special symbolism. 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.

The Dream of the Earth Quotes

The Dream of the Earth Quotes Showing 1-3 of 3

“Tell me a story, a story that will be my story as well as the story of everyone and everything about me, the story that brings us together in a valley community, a story that brings together the human community with every living being in the valley, a story that brings us together under the arc of the great blue sky in the day and the starry heavens at night, a story that will drench us with rain and dry us in the wind, a story told by humans to one another that will also be the story that the wood thrush sings in the thicket, the story that the river recites in its downward journey, the story that Storm King Mountain images forth in the fullness of its grandeur.”

― Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth

tags: community, language, myth, nature, story, wild4 likesLike

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“We must, however, reflect on what is happening. It is an urgent matter, especially for those of us who still live in a meaningful, even a numinous, earth community. We have not spoken. Nor even have we seen clearly what is happening. The issue goes far beyond economics, or commerce, or poetics, or an evening of pleasantries as we look out over a scenic view. Something is happening beyond all this. We are losing splendind and intimate modes of divine presence. We are, perhaps, losing ourselves.”

― Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth

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“For people, generally, their story of the universe and the human role in the universe is their primary source of intelligibility and value. ... The deepest crises experienced by any society are those moments of change when the story becomes inadequate for meeting the survival demands of a present situation.”

― Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth