« Re-Centering in Earth-Consciousness after Getting Off-Center »

So many things demand the center of our attention. However, nothing demanding the center can be there without our consent. We choose what we put at the center of our consciousness. It’s a wonderful power to claim because, at this moment in time, our species has gotten off-center and needs to re-center.

Here’s what I mean.

In the big picture, Earth is now demanding the center of our attention through all the ecological crises. Our children and grandchildren want us to agree that Earth is a deserving center for our consciousness. The viability of their lives in the remainder of this century absolutely depends on us living Earth-centered ways. Civilization has gotten us off-center. We’ve believed enough of what civilization advertizes as better to now find ourselves well off target on what Earth can sustain. We need to re-center in Earth and creation even though civilization says its ways are more life-enhancing, more convenient, more time-saving, and more systemically in control than the ways of Earth and creation. 

So here’s to re-centering in Earth and her grand story. Instead of civilizing Earth, let’s accept her invitation to us to be rewilded and “naturalized” by her. 

That’s the Call that comes to us now. It comes from Earth herself as well as the voice deep within us that is weary of living off-center, captive to civilization’s ways. The Call is to live from Earth-centered consciousness. 

Thomas Berry, in his book, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (1999), spoke of our Call to get re-centered this way:

The Great Work before us, the task of moving modern industrial civilization from its present devastating influence on the Earth to a more benign mode of presence, is not a role that we have chosen. It is a role given to us, beyond any consultation with ourselves. We did not choose. We were chosen by some power beyond ourselves for this historical task (pages 7-8).

That quote opens Chapter Three in my forthcoming book, From Egos to Eden: Our Heroic Journey to Keep Earth Livable. I like how Berry speaks of our Great Work as something to which we’ve been summoned. We don’t have to think about whether we’ll do it. No. It’s just ours to do. It’s Earth loving us enough to call on us to partner with her in moving to a new era. The summons to Earth-centered consciousness gifts our lives with such magnetic purpose that everyone and everything else find their rightful places in our lives too.