EARTH DAY APRIL 22, 2024
EARTH DAY, APRIL 22, 2024
REFLECTIONS
THE WORDS OF
FATHER THOMAS BERRY, CP
"...the universe, by definition, is a single gorgeous celebratory event.”
--The Dream of the Earth, 1988 (p. 5)
“Our relationship with the earth involves something more than pragmatic use, academic understanding, or aesthetic appreciation. A truly human intimacy with the earth and with the entire natural world is needed. Our children should be properly introduced to the world in which they live, to the trees and grasses and flowers, to the birds and the insects and the various animals that roam over the land, to the entire range of natural phenomena."
-- The Dream of the Earth (p. 13)
“So too every being has rights to be recognized and revered. Trees have tree rights, insects have insect rights, rivers have river rights, and mountains have mountain rights."
--The Great Work: Our Way into the Future,1999 (p. 5)
"The present urgency is to begin thinking within the context of the whole planet, the integral earth community with all its human and other-than-human components."
-- The Great Work (p. 105)
"The Great Work now, as we move into a new millennium, is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner."
-- The Great Work (p.3)
"The present is not a time for desperation but for hopeful activity."
-- The Great Work (p. 19)
"We are not lacking in the dynamic forces needed to create the future. We live immersed in a sea of energy beyond all comprehension. But this energy, in an ultimate sense, is ours not by domination but by invocation."
-- The Great Work (p. 175)
“Our challenge is to create a new language, even a new sense of what it is to be human. It is to transcend not only national limitations, but even our species isolation, to enter into the larger community of living species. This brings about a completely new sense of reality and value.”
--The Dream of the Earth (p. 42)
