By Thomas Berry
New York: Harmony/Bell Tower,1999.
“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.” (Thomas Berry, “The Great Work,” in The Great Work, 3).
“…everything has a right to be recognized and revered. Trees have tree rights, insects have insect rights, rivers have river rights, and mountains have mountain rights.” (Thomas Berry, “The Great Work,” in The Great Work, 5).
“Perhaps the most valuable heritage we can provide for future generations is some sense of the Great Work that is before them of moving the human project from its devastating exploitation to a benign presence. We need to give them some indication of how the next generation can fulfill this work in an effective manner.” (Thomas Berry, “The Great Work,” in The Great Work, 7).
“We can no longer hear the voice of the rivers, the mountains, or the sea. The trees and meadows are no longer intimate modes of spirit presence. The world about us has become an ‘it’ rather than a ‘thou.’” (Thomas Berry, “The Meadow Across the Creek,” in The Great Work, 17).
“The present is not a time for desperation but for hopeful activity.” (Thomas Berry, “The Meadow Across the Creek,” in The Great Work, 19).
“We now live not so much in a cosmos as in a cosmogenesis; that is, a universe ever coming into being through an irreversible sequence of transformations moving, in the larger arc of its development, from a lesser to a great order of complexity and from a lesser to great consciousness.” (Thomas Berry, “The Earth Story,” in The Great Work, 26).
“…the origin moment of the universe presents us with an amazing process that we begin to appreciate as a mystery unfolding through the ages.” (Thomas Berry, “The Earth Story,” in The Great Work, 27).
“With all the inadequacies of any narrative, the epic of evolution does present the story of the universe as this story is now available to us out of our present experience. This is our sacred story. It is our way of dealing with the ultimate mystery whence all things come into being.” (Thomas Berry, “The Earth Story,” in The Great Work, 31).
“The human is neither an addendum nor an intrusion into the universe. We are quintessentially integral with the universe.” (Thomas Berry, “The Earth Story,” in The Great Work, 32).
“…we will recover our sense of wonder and our sense of the sacred only if we appreciate the universe beyond ourselves as a revelatory experience of that numinous presence whence all things came into being. Indeed, the universe is the primary sacred reality. We become sacred by our participation in this more sublime dimension of the world about us.” (Thomas Berry, “The Wild and the Sacred,” in The Great Work, 49).
“The natural world demands a response beyond scientific insight. The natural world demands a response that rises from the wild unconscious depths of the human soul.” (Thomas Berry, “The Wild and the Sacred,” in The Great Work, 55).
“By bringing forth the planet Earth, its living forms, and its human intelligence, the universe has found, so far as we know, its most elaborate expression and manifestation of its deepest mystery. Here, in its human mode, the universe reflects on and celebrates itself in a unique mode of conscious self-awareness.” (Thomas Berry, “The Viable Human,” in The Great Work, 56).
“The naïve assumption that the natural world is there to be possessed and used by humans for their advantage and in an unlimited manner cannot be accepted.” (Thomas Berry, “The Viable Human,” in The Great Work, 61).
“Education and religion, especially, should awaken in the young an awareness of the world in which they live, how it functions, how the human fits into the larger community of life, the role that the human fulfills in the great story of the universe, and the historical sequence of developments that have shaped our physical and cultural landscape. Along with this awareness of the past and present, education and religion should communicate some guidance concerning the future.” (Thomas Berry, “The Viable Human,” in The Great Work, 71).
“Both education and religion need to ground themselves within the story of the universe as we now know it through our empirical ways of knowing. Within this functional cosmology we can overcome our alienation and begin the renewal of life on a sustainable basis. This story is a numinous revelatory story that could evoke not only the vision but also the energies needed for bringing ourselves and the entire planet into a new order of survival.” (Thomas Berry, “The Viable Human,” in The Great Work, 71).
“If the central pathology that has led to the termination of the Cenozoic is the radical discontinuity established between the human and the nonhuman, then the renewal of life on the planet must be based on the continuity between the human and the other than human as a single integral community. Once this continuity is recognized and accepted, then we will have fulfilled the basic condition that will enable the human to become more present to the Earth in a mutually enhancing manner.” (Thomas Berry, “The University,” in The Great Work, 80).
“Education at all levels would be understood as knowing the universe story and the human role in the story. The basic course in any college or university would be the story of the universe.” (Thomas Berry, “The University,” in The Great Work, 81).
“For Children to live only in contact with concrete and steel and wires and wheels and machines and computers and plastics, to seldom experience any primordial reality or even to see the stars at night, is soul deprivation that diminishes the deepest of their human experiences.” (Thomas Berry, “The University,” in The Great Work, 82).
“Here I propose that the universities need to teach the story of the universe as this is now available to us. For the universe story is our own story. We cannot know ourselves in any adequate manner except through an account of the transformations of the universe and of the planet Earth through which we came into being. This new story of the universe is our personal story as well as our community story.” (Thomas Berry, “The University,” in The Great Work, 83).
“The universities must decide whether they will continue training persons for temporary survival in the declining Cenozoic Era or whether they will begin educating students for the emerging Ecozoic.” (Thomas Berry, “The University,” in The Great Work, 85).
“…it is the time for universities to rethink themselves and what they are doing.” (Thomas Berry, “The University,” in The Great Work, 85).
“When we awaken to a revelation that the industrial world, as now functioning, can exist for only a brief historical period, we might begin to consider just how we can establish a more sustainable setting for our physical survival and personal fulfillment.” (Thomas Berry, “Ecological Geography,” in The Great Work, 93).
“…the time has come to study the Earth for the purposes of the Earth.” (Thomas Berry, “Ecological Geography,” in The Great Work, 96).
“Our studies in what we call ecology must lead to such intimacy with our natural surroundings. Only intimacy can save us from our present commitment to a plundering industrial economy.” (Thomas Berry, “Ecological Geography,” in The Great Work, 99).
“Perhaps a new revelatory experience is taking place, an experience wherein human consciousness awakens to the grandeur and sacred quality of the Earth process. Humanity has seldom participated in such a vision since shamanic times, but in such a renewal lies our hope for the future for ourselves and for the entire planet on which we live.” (Thomas Berry, “Ethics and Ecology,” in The Great Work, 106).
“Physical degradation of the natural world is also the degradation of the interior world of the human.” (Thomas Berry, “The New Political Alignment,” in The Great Work, 110).
“The greatest of human discoveries in the future will be the discovery of human intimacy with all those other modes of being that live with us on this planet, inspire our art and literature, reveal that numinous world whence all things come into being, and with which we exchange the very substance of life.” (Thomas Berry, “The Extractive Economy,” in The Great Work, 149).
“The historical mission of our times is to reinvent the human – at the species level, with critical reflection, within the community of life-systems, in a time-developmental context, by means of story and shared dream experience.” (Thomas Berry, “Reinventing the Human,” in The Great Work, 159).
“…our own future is inseparable from the future of the larger community that brought us into being.” (Thomas Berry, “Reinventing the Human,” in The Great Work, 162).
“Our sense of who we are and what our role is must begin where the universe begins.” (Thomas Berry, “Reinventing the Human,” in The Great Work, 162).
“The human venture depends absolutely on this quality of awe and reverence and joy in the Earth and all that lives and grows upon the Earth. As soon as we isolate ourselves from these currents of life and from the profound mood that these engender within us, then our basic life-satisfactions are diminished.” (Thomas Berry, “The Dynamics of the Future,” in The Great Work, 166).
“How we feel about ourselves and about the Earth process are questions of utmost urgency.” (Thomas Berry, “The Dynamics of the Future,” in The Great Work, 167).
“We must feel that we are supported by that same process that brought the Earth into being, that power that spun the galaxies into space, that lit the sun and brought the moon into its orbit. […] Those same forces are still present; indeed, we might feel their impact at this time and understand that we are not isolated in the chill of space with the burden of the future upon us and without the aid of any other power.” (Thomas Berry, “The Dynamics of the Future,” in The Great Work, 174).
“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.” (Thomas Berry, “The Dynamics of the Future,” in The Great Work, 175).
“Awareness that the universe is more Cosmogenesis than cosmos might be the greatest change in human consciousness that has taken place since the awakening of the human mind in the Paleolithic Period.” (Thomas Berry, “The Fourfold Wisdom,” in The Great Work, 190).
“A new basis for the unity of humans with the larger earth community is found in the discoveries of modern science. The more clearly we understand the sciences and their perceptions of the universe, the more clearly we appreciate the intimate presence of each component of the universe with every other component. This unity is realized both in our studies of the large-scale structure and functioning of the universe and in the geobiological systems of the earth.” (Thomas Berry, “The Fourfold Wisdom,” in The Great Work, 194).
“The more clearly we understand the sciences and their perceptions of the universe, the more clearly we understand the intimate presence of each component of the universe with every other component.” (Thomas Berry, “The Fourfold Wisdom,” in The Great Work, 194).
“The universe story is our story, individually and as the human community. In this context we can feel secure in our efforts to fulfill the Great Work before us. The guidance, the inspiration and the energy we need is available. The accomplishment of the Great Work is the task not simply of the human community but of the entire planet Earth. Even beyond the Earth, it is the Great Work of the universe itself.” (Thomas Berry, “The Fourfold Wisdom,” in The Great Work, 195).
“As we enter the twenty-first century, we are experiencing a moment of grace. Such moments are privileged moments. The great transformations of the universe occur at such times. The future is defined in some enduring pattern of its functioning.” (Thomas Berry, “Moments of Grace,” in The Great Work, 196).