Sierra Club: Creative Energy

Father Thomas Berry's visionary DREAM OF THE EARTH (1990) changed my life. When I read this 90-page book in observance of Earth Day today, I soon discovered that the four "essays" collected here are actually Chapters 4, 10, 15, and 16 of THE DREAM OF THE EARTH. We are living in "a bitter moment" (p. 60) for the earth, Berry writes. We have subdued the wilderness, devastated the planet in the name of "progress" (pp. 58-9), and "the day of reckoning" is now upon us (p. 68)."Only in a viable natural world can there be a viable human world" (p. 16). "In relation to to the earth," Berry observes, "we have been autistic" (p. 78) for too long, and we need to listen now to what the earth is telling us (p. 19). Because we "bear the universe in our beings" (p. 35), Berry tells us "we need to go to the earth, as the source whence we came, and ask for its guidance. We need to go to the universe and inquire concerning the basic issues of reality and value, for . . . the universe carries the deep mysteries of our existence within itself" (p. 45).If you're new to Thomas Berry's excellent deep-ecology books, read his DREAM OF THE EARTH instead of this book, and if you've already read THE DREAM OF THE EARTH, then skip this book and read THE GREAT WORK (2000).G. Merritt