Loose Leaf Notes

– The following first appeared in The  Floyd Press newspaper on April 23, 2015.

“The universe is a community of subjects and not a collection of objects” is a truth that was stated by eco-theologian Thomas Berry and quoted throughout the recent SustainFloyd community conversation and documentary screening of The Great Story, a film about Berry’s life’s work.

The 55 minute film, shown at the Floyd Country Store Saturday, April 18th, was the 19^th in the SustainFloyd series and followed a beans and rice dinner. It told the story of Berry’s life and philosophies through his own words and the words of colleagues who studied with him. Born in Greensboro, NC, in 1914, Berry was a catholic priest, historian and author who brought ecology and spirituality together and participated in what he called “The Great Work, until his death in 2009.

“We don’t understand the earth as a sacred reality, the trees as sacred, the rivers and mountains as sacred. My effort is to establish a capacity to experience the developing story of the universe as our sacred story,” Berry said on film.

Indigenous people have always had a Great Story that brought a cohesive sense of belonging to and reverence for the natural world. Berry explained that the shift from the divine in the natural world to the perception of the divine in the historical order was deepened in the 14^th century when a great plague occurred and 1/3 of Europe died.

“People became frightened of the natural world and thought it wicked. They disengaged from it to be redeemed out of the world, rather than learn how to live intimately with the world and the perception of the divine in it. From then on it became possible to commodify the natural world, to see it as being there for use.”

Describing the sense of sacred as feeling awe in the presence of the miracle of creation, and to the film’s backdrop of spectacular images from the natural world, Berry said, “We wrote a constitution that gave all the rights to humans, and the non-human has no rights. It’s simply there as background for the human. To my mind, that is an inadequate way to understand the human because the human is a member of the great community of planet earth.”

He spoke of the madness of the despoliation of the planet, the loss of species and how children need a universe to be raised whole. “They don’t see the stars. Not to see the stars is a soul loss,” Berry said.   He taught that we are coded to exist in a world of beauty and that “nothing is itself without everything else.”

Alwyn Moss, one of the program’s guest panelists, studied under Berry in Greensboro and in Schumacher College of Holistic Science in England. She spent formal and informal time with him and remarked that his teachings gave her strength during her involvement in land preservation projects in Blacksburg, where she currently lives. She referred to Berry as a visionary of our time. “A practical visionary backed-up by truth and specifics.”

Moss, who was Blue Mountain School’s first kindergarten teacher more than 30 years ago, spoke about Berry’s call for changes in the curriculum of today’s universities. “He shows how when we separate everything, so that it’s detached and “so-called” objective as a training, we totally cut off what makes us human, so that we never approach the world with a large or imaginative vision, both creative and scientific.”

She responded to an audience member’s comment about the benefits of technological advances, saying, “It’s not either or. Technology has something to offer but it’s imbalanced.   We live off what the planet provides, not technology.”

Author, blogger, naturalist and biology teacher, Fred First also took part in the panel discussion.   He shared a quote that has been meaningful to him, “One place understood helps us understand all places better.”   He spoke of nature deficit disorder, eco-apathy, and lack of place as issues that need to be addressed for connections to be made and change to take place. He joked about wanting to see Presidents and members of Congress study biology and “get their hands in the dirt.”

Speaking on the disparity between science and faith, First said, “As a Christian the last 40 years have been rough, trying to understand why the church hasn’t embraced stewardship and creation care.” He reported hopeful signs that the language of stewardship is becoming part of the church more. “Even the Southern Baptists have a great forum for creation care now.”

Joe Klein, part of the Springhouse Community School leadership team and founder of Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme), said the iBme mission of bringing self-regulating skills and social emotional intelligence to teens has been successful but was brining him further and further from home. Starting SHCS, a placed-based, project-led high school, came about, in part, because Klein wanted to bring his work home to his own community.

He re-iterated some of the wisdom traditions that Berry outlined, saying that our youth need immersion in not just the scientific wisdom, but in direct relationship with what inspires them and makes them curious. “I think that’s part of what Blue Mountain School and SHCS were founded on, having a balance of science, the arts and creative expression to develop whole human beings that can be innovators and help us use all our abilities for the needs of all.”

Klein said that he was a good student growing up, one that had a lot of content knowledge but lacked a sense of interiority, which caused him to feel lost for many years.   He spoke of the importance of time in silence and solitude, which is “getting rarer and rarer to find,” as way to connect with the self and its relationship with the natural world.

“Whether we are atheist, Jewish or Christian, whether we use the word “sacred,” “reverence” or “wonderful,” the real question is: are our choices life affirming or not?” attendee Margie Scott offered in relation to an audience comment on the line between secular and sacred.

Woody Crenshaw, who facilitated the community conversation, closed the program by thanking everyone in attendance and inviting them to learn more about SustainFloyd, a grassroots group that promotes healthy local economy and ecology. He spoke of Berry’s philosophy on the Great Work, saying “Each generation has a Great Work. I would propose that SustainFloyd is trying to do that work in its own small way.”

__________Watch a video clip of the community conversation on The Great Work HERE and HERE.