THOMAS BERRY: A BIOGRAPHY

Thomas Berry was one of the great ecological teachers of our time, one who linked contemporary concerns for ecological devastation with the deep human urge to connect with the cosmos. His books include The Dream of the Earth, The Great Work, and, in collaboration with cosmologist Brian Swimme, The Universe Story. These, along with his lectures, films and teaching, and his extensive collaborations, brought his ideas to a wide public both within religious traditions and beyond.

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim worked closely with Thomas Berry for over thirty years as his students, editors and literary executors; they have collaborated with Andrew Angyal, Emeritus Professor of English and author of several biographies, to give us this account of his life.

In The Great Work, Berry told how, as a child, wandering from his house, he came across a meadow 'covered with white lilies rising above the grass'. In this magic moment he realized: 'whatever preserves and enhances this meadow in its natural cycles of transformation is good; whatever opposes this meadow or negates it is not good'.

The biography shows how this early learning deepened through his religious experience. Drawn to a contemplative life, he joined the Passionist order. As a monk he participated for years in the Divine Office, the daily cycle of prayer that follows the cosmological sequence of the day between darkness and light; and the cycle of the year that marks the transition from Christmas/solstice to Easter/springtime. Berry saw that this ritual cycle represented 'the age-old effort of humans to bring human life into accord with the great liturgy of the universe'. Drawing on these foundational experiences he articulated the 'great work', the task of 'moving modern industrial civilization from its present devastating influence on Earth to a more benign mode of presence'.

These experiences were illuminated by three main teachings, derived from Teilhard de Chardin: that the universe from its beginnings has a psychic-spiritual as well as a physical-material dimension; that the human story and the universe story are a single story; and that western religious traditions need to move from an almost exclusive concern for redemption to an emphasis on creation. Later, in The Dream of the Earth he wrote of 'the great spiralling galaxies… and this privileged planet Earth!'; of humans as 'the most recent wonder of the universe, a special mode of reflecting on this larger curvature of the universe itself'.

Berry struggled to find a way to develop and teach these insights: we learn of his studies of cultural history, his experiences in the army and in China, his vocational crisis as a monk; how he widened his studies from Western and Christian traditions to include Asian and indigenous perspectives; how, eventually, in 1970 he founded the Riverdale Centre for Religious Research in a Victorian house in the Bronx with view across the Hudson River. Riverdale was devoted to reflection on evolutionary history: 'human, biological, geological, and cosmological'. Here, Thomas held seminars and discussion with teachers and students from many walks of life and academic disciplines. The account of life at Riverdale is of a lively community of inquiry, focussed around a broad theme but with space for individuals to pursue their own directions.

It was from Riverdale that the 'new story' emerged in collaboration with cosmologist Brian Swimme. The cosmological stories told by all religions arise not abstractly but from 'intimate human interactions and the Earth systems. They can give humans a sense of belonging and purpose, providing reflections on such basic questions as: Where do I come from?' Thomas saw that modern humans are troubled because we no longer have a good story, that we are between stories. The new story united science and humanities in an account of the evolution of the Universe from 'the great flaring forth' to humanity's evolving place in the cosmos. It moved from human-centred to Earth-centred, offering a story that places the human in the context of Earth.

Berry's teaching evolved from his understanding of 'the interior presence… the livingness of things' in the context of evolutionary time. In many ways, his perspective was close to 'panpsychic' philosophy, the metaphysical view that the cosmos is a coherent field of mind/matter; that all things, including the Earth itself, are integral to the fabric of the living, sentient cosmos, philosopher Freya Mathews puts it. But he never used the term 'panpsychic'. Mary Evelyn Tucker, in personal correspondence, suggests that this was in part because he liked to coin his own terms: asserting, for example, that Earth is not a collection of objects but a communion of subjects. Further, he was building on the cosmic evolutionary perspective of Teilhard de Chardin, rather than any philosophical panpsychic tradition, Whiteheadian or Spinozan. This unfortunately means that his work has been somewhat overlooked in contemporary debates on panpsychism.

This biography gives those influenced by Berry's teaching invaluable insights into how his perspective evolved and the quality of his presence as a spiritual and ecological teacher. The later chapters—on Time, Teilhard de Chardin, Confucian perspectives and Indigenous traditions—move away from the strictly biographical and draw together some of the continuing threads and influences that ran through his life.

The book closes with an assertion of the deep confidence in the future that Thomas Berry bequeathed: we can all learn, through mutual presencing with the Earth community, to become 'cosmic persons'—although this is the achievement of a lifetime. He was confident in the evolutionary processes and the continuing revelation that can align 'human imagination and ingenuity with the creativity of the universe and the Earth' leading to a new Ecozoic Age.

This biography beautifully shows us the unfolding life of a great religious, philosophical and ecological teacher, one who was also—as I know from direct experience—immensely kind, humorous and generous. We are told that, as he approached his death at the age of ninety-four he remarked, 'I will be in the universe where I always have been'.