By Thomas Berry
Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2015 (orig. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988).
“…the universe, by definition, is a single gorgeous celebratory event.” (Berry, “Returning to Our Native Place,” in The Dream of the Earth, 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.” (Thomas Berry, “Human Presence,” in The Dream of the Earth, 13).
“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.” (Thomas Berry, “The Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth, 42).
“The American college may be considered a continuation, at the human level, of the self-education process of the earth itself: universe education, earth education, and human education are stages of development in a single unbroken process.” (Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth, 89).
“The next transition, from the dominant scientific-technological period to the ecological period, is turbulent indeed. This turbulence establishes the context of our present educational discussions.” (Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth, 94).
“Education must be a pervasive life experience.” (Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth, 96).
“…at the higher levels of formal education the needed processes of reflection on meaning and values must take place within this critical context.” (Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth, 97).
“College students should feel that they are participating in one of the most significant ventures ever to take place in the entire history of the planet.” (Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth, 97).
“The sublime mission of modern education is to reveal the true importance of this story for the total range of human and earthly affairs.” (Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth, 98).
“The entire college project can be seen as that of enabling the student to understand the immense story of the universe and the role of the student in creating the next phase of the story.” (Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth, 98).
“While the traditional origin and journey stories are also needed in the educational process, none of them can provide the encompassing context for education such as is available in this new story.” (Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth, 98-9).
“The urgency for this type of comprehensive course can hardly be exaggerated.” (Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth, 100).
“Within this context the American college could understand in some depth its role in creating a future worthy of that larger universal community of beings out of which the human component emerged and in which the human community finds its proper fulfillment.” (Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth, 108).
“Within this story a structure of knowledge can be established, with it’s human significance, from the physics of the universe and it’s chemistry through geology and biology to economics and commerce and so to all those studies whereby we fulfill our role in the Earth process. There is no way of guiding the course of human affairs through the perilous course of the future except by discovering our role in this larger evolutionary process.” (Thomas Berry, “The New Story,” in The Dream of the Earth, 136).
“Here we might observe that the basic mood of the future might well be one of confidence in the continuing revelation that takes place in and through the earth. If the dynamics of the universe from the beginning shaped the course of the heavens, lighted the sun, and formed the earth, if this same dynamism brought forth the continents and seas and atmosphere, if it awakened life in the primordial cell and then brought into being the unnumbered variety of living beings, and finally brought us into being and guided us safely through the turbulent centuries, there is reason to believe that this same guiding process is precisely what has awakened in us our present understanding of ourselves and our relation to this stupendous process. Sensitized to such guidance from the very structure and functioning of the universe, we can have confidence in the future that awaits the human venture.” (Thomas Berry, “The New Story,” in The Dream of the Earth, 137).
“The most difficult transition to make is from an anthropocentric to a biocentric norm of progress. If there is to be any true progress, then the entire life community must progress. Any progress of the human at the expense of the larger life community must ultimately lead to a diminishment of human life itself.” (Thomas Berry, “Bioregions: The Context for Reinhabiting the Earth,” in The Dream of the Earth, 165).