Oh Beautiful Precious Blue Mother

How precious our planet. Watching our beautiful blue marble of a planet in space fills me with awe. It makes me sad to think how little we have cared for this paradise we live on, how much we have taken for granted. We must learn to change the way we think of the planet, to give it rights and to nurture it as a living entity.

Thomas Berry said that the universe is a communion of subjects and not a collection of objects.Thomas Berry passed away on June 1st 2009. He was remembered by many who gave tribute to him and his vision for a more interconnected relationship with the natural world. Joseph Prabhu, member of the Melbourne Parliament, had the following to say.

Thomas pointed the way after centuries of estrangement and human domination of the earth to what he called The Ecozoic Era, where humankind would see itself as a vital and conscious part of a vast, interconnected and living whole--a true “communion of subjects.”

Thomas in many ways continued the work and expanded the vision of his renowned predecessor in whose footsteps he followed, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard once proclaimed, “Some day, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of Love. And then for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

The following excerpt written by Thomas Berry expresses the essence of the founding principles of his thinking. Here is a simple experience, something we can all relate to ourselves, elevated to a level that most of us have forgotten ; how to really see the natural world as an extension of ourselves.

"It was an early afternoon in May when I first wandered down the incline, crossed the creek, and looked out over the scene. The field was covered with white lilies rising above the thick grass. A magic moment, this experience gave to my life something that seems to explain my life at a…profound level. It was not only the lilies. It was the singing of the crickets and the woodlands in the distance and the clouds in a clear sky…

…This early experience… has become normative for me throughout the entire range of my thinking. Whatever preserves and enhances this meadow in the natural cycles of its transformation is good, what is opposed to this meadow or negates it is not good…
That is good in economics which fosters the natural processes of this meadow. So in jurisprudence, law, and political affairs—that is good which recognizes the rights of this meadow and the creek and the woodlands to exist and flourish in the ever-renewing seasonal expression.

Let us work each moment, in large and small ways, to harness the awesome power of Love."

Follow the link to wonder at the beauty entrusted to our care.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwwioJhQzeg