Thomas BerryLots of candidates won in the U.S. 2014 midterm elections who speak and vote in ways hostile to our planet. Paradoxically, many progressive initiatives and propositions on ballots received majority victories. I won’t offer an analysis in this blog. Instead, I’ll offer a quote from Thomas Berry that reminds us all what our Great Work is no matter how elections go. Here’s Berry:
“The Great Work now, as we move into a new millennium, is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner. This historical change is something more than the transition from the classical Roman period to the medieval period, or from the medieval period to modern times. Such a transition has no historical parallel since the geobiological transition that took place 67 million years ago when the period of the dinosaurs was terminated and a new biological age begun. So now we awaken to a period of extensive disarray in the biological structure and functioning of the planet.”
Berry exhibited enormous capacity to speak of all the ways that human activity and inventiveness throughout the 20th century were devastating Earth, yet, he spoke without despair. He deeply believed that we humans could make the meta-changes in consciousness needed to enter into the Great Work. He believed we and our children had a special role:
“Our own special role, which we will hand on to our children, is that of managing the arduous transition from the terminal Cenozoic to the emerging Ecozoic Era, the period when humans will be present to the planet as participating members of the comprehensive Earth community. This is our Great Work and the work of our children ….”
(The above is excerpted from a book I’m writing. The Berry quotations come from his book entitled, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future.)