« Sizing Up Our Great Work »

Chapter Two of my next book begins with these two quotes:

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.   —Thomas Berry 

It is far easier to walk in shoes too small for us than to step into the largeness that soul expects and demands. —James Hollis, psychotherapist

Our Great Work in the 21st century is to reverse climate change and to reshape our societies to live within our planet’s generosity. This task requires the “reinvented human” of Chapter One and a heroic, cooperative effort. Change, both within us and around us, must be to scale with the enormity and complexities of the forces threatening life on our planet. Our inner changes must take us into greater and deeper topographies of consciousness. Our outer changes must accelerate all the actions of relationship with Earth that can reverse climate change and restore the health of our planet’s land, water, and air. 

Said in another way, our Great Work is to leave the “Civilization Project” of the past 12,000 years. That project has approached Nature with the intent to tame and control her, to civilize her. The project understood humans as “naturally” prone to barbarity, so we too need to be tamed and civilized. But our heroic task today requires us to proceed quite differently. We need to come closer to mimicking Nature than civilizing her. Our civilizing activity turns Eden into dark tragedy; our Great Work rediscovers Eden’s enlightening possibilities to undergird the new relationship we need with all species, and with ourselves.

The inner and outer activities of this Great Work reinforce one another, each causing the other and each resulting from the other. That synergy increases as we join with all who are engaging in this work. In solidarity, we become able to do what the Civilization Project has not and cannot accomplish—reshaping our lives and social systems to fit inside Earth’s eco-systems. Difficult as this change is proving to be, we are fully capable of doing it. Its epic size need not deter us if, in solidarity, we engage upon our Great Work equipped with myths as eloquent as Eden, with science’s best data, and with determination to continually ask of all human decisions: Does this decision get us to OneEarth living, or does it continue with MultiEarth versions?