by Carolyn Toben

I live on an earth sanctuary in North Carolina…and outside my bedroom, if I wake up to it, I can look out to the left and see dawn rising in the east over a small lake. On some mornings, I awake with the whole room bathed in an orange-pink light that cannot be held but becomes a sacred moment that brings with it wonder and reverence and a sense of deep time. My dear friend Thomas Berry said the dawning of the sun “activates” a sense of the sacred in the soul.

In this historic time that Thomas called “a convulsive moment in history,” we long for new “dawnings,” sacred moments of hope that will balance and steady us during the rapidly accelerating transitions we are experiencing at both the personal and global level. In 2015, two major “moments” led the way for a larger spiritual vision that is beginning to emerge within the global community: the publication of Pope Francis’ Laudato Si, that brings us into a new dawning of our spiritual responsibilities for “Care of Our Common Home”; and the Climate Change Conference in Paris in which representatives of 195 nations came into accord on a plan to address the drastic effects of climate change…for the whole of creation. Both bring hope for a new spiritual dawning in human history accompanied by prayers for the earth from hundreds of thousands all over the world.

Much is available to help us sustain that hope for our time on global and personal levels through the work of Thomas Berry. Thomas was a priest, monk, mystic, cultural historian, shaman, scholar, author of nine books, a prophet of hope and a visionary. Newsweek Magazine called Thomas “the leading spokesman for the earth” who had a “profound influence on the intellectual and spiritual history of the 20th and early 21st centuries.”

Thomas had the gift of inspiring others. He breathed new life into the world through his teachings and insights that literally transformed thousands of lives and birthed new social forms that are still expanding today. Honored by the United Nations and the recipient of eight honorary doctorate degrees, Thomas spent his entire life in service to the earth and the survival of the planet through his commitment to the spiritual values he knew must evolve at this time. “We will only save what we love,” he said,” and we only love what we regard as sacred.”

I had the great privilege of spending many hours in deep personal conversations with Thomas Berry during the last ten years of his life after he retired to North Carolina. During our time together, he introduced me to his vast foundational thoughts that opened a portal on a new field of spiritual consciousness of the human-earth relationship that can guide us forward in this time of great transition. “We are being changed,” he said. “We are being transformed to see everything in its proper proportion. We are being driven down to the heart with its radical, interior tendencies.”

Towards the end of his life, I asked Thomas what thoughts he would like to share that could be helpful and hope-filled at this pivotal time in our planet’s history. These were some of his responses:

“Tell them something new is happening; a new vision, a new energy, a new sacred story is coming into being in the transition from one era to another.

Tell them in the darkness of this time, a vast transformation is dawning in the depths of human consciousness which is leading to the recovery of the soul, the earth, the universe, and a sense of the sacred.

Tell them that the One loving voice that spoke through every cosmic activity is speaking again now through voices all over the earth—voices that recognize that loving the earth as our common origin unifies all. In the sacred, all opposites are reconciled. This loving voice is also speaking through every bird, leaf, and star and through the polar bear, the wolf, and every threatened species, awakening humanity to see all living forms as a single sacred community that lives or dies together.

Tell them that the concern now must be for the preservation of the whole earth, a bio-spiritual planet; tell them they must participate in mutual presence with the whole human venture in this perilous course of the future. The most basic issue is how we bond with the earth.

Tell them that each has a unique part to play in this period of great transition, no matter what age or life experience, and that each of them brings specialized emotions and imagination to this time and very different ways of knowing…all of which are desperately needed now.

Tell them to remember as they grope forward to create a new century of life in the 21st century, that the universe is still expanding; that they are always in the process of becoming, always opening to greater and greater life if they can learn to see it.

Tell them the greatest need is to recognize the promptings that emerge from the depths of one’s own being where the sacred reality of love resides.

Above all, tell them to practice an intimate presence to the beauty and wonder of the natural world through their intuitive awareness that recognizes the oneness of all life; tell them to stop and enlarge moments of hope throughout their days of the miracles and mysteries of creation all around them…the movement of a squirrel, the sound of a bird, the pattern of a leaf, changing patterns of life…the sun, rain, stars, dawn and sunset. Tell them we are not ourselves without everything and everyone else.

Tell them to remember the great seasons and cycles of life. In moments of intimacy with the natural world, they will recover the lost sense of the sacred in the human-earth relationship. And they will be participating in the evolution of a new consciousness on earth that can overcome our present division between humans and the natural world. A mutually-enhancing relationship will then become possible as the communion of all things is understood.

Finally, tell them it is of utmost importance that they become aware of the numinous sacred values that have been present in an expanding sequence over four and a half billion years of the earth’s existence, and let them know they will always be guided by the same Divine Power that spun the galaxies into space, lit the sun and brought the moon into orbit.”

What greater reason could we have to be hope-bearers? He spoke these words at what turned out to be my last meeting with Thomas. He passed away three days later leaving a lifelong legacy of a love that unified the whole of creation and inspires a new dawning of hope in our time. If only we will awaken to it.

___

Carolyn Toben is an educator, counselor, creator of new social forms and author of Recovering a Sense of the Sacred: Conversations with Thomas Berry. Carolyn founded The Center for Education, Imagination and the Natural World at Timberlake Earth Sanctuary in Whitsett, North Carolina.