The New Story and the Earth Community

The following is quoted from Thomas Berry: Selected Writings on the Earth Community. Berry created the “new story” as described below, which dovetails with latest scientific understanding of the evolution of the universe as revealed in life on planet Earth.

“The New Story” is a culmination of a lifetime of Berry’s reflections on the growing ecological crisis and what new paradigm would be essential to counteract the devastating power of extractive industries and consumer economies…

To do this he felt we needed a coherent evolutionary story that would draw together science and religion in an integrated manner…In other words, the revolutions of the last three centuries in astronomy with Copernicus, gravitation with Newton, genetics with Mendel, biology with Darwin, and physics with Einstein could be threaded together in an epic story of evolution. Moreover, the more recent discoveries regarding the unfolding of the early universe needed to be told in a way that was comprehensible and comprehensive. Thus the new cosmology of universe emergence and the formation of stars and galaxies could now be told in a manner that was accessible to a nonscientist. Moreover, the new understanding of planetary formation and the emergence of life on Earth could be narrated in a way that the viewer could recognize the evolutionary processes of both universe and Earth as dynamic, differentiating, and self-organizing…

All of this is to say that humans have emerged out of these processes and are not an addendum to them. Rather they are the self-reflective consciousness of Earth itself. We are related to all other species, sharing their genetic coding. Moreover, we see the stars, too, as our ancestors for out of their explosions have come the elements necessary for life…

One of Berry’s central convictions was that as we began to see the universe as an unfolding symphony and Earth as a living planet, we would be able to find our role as participants in these dynamic processes. As we appreciate the immense diversity of the Earth community, we would come more fully into communion with Earth’s ecosystems and life forms. Thus, learning to work with nature’s creativity would become our “Great Work” in the newly emerging ecological age that Berry called the Ecozoic era.”

Mary Evelyn Tucker; John Grim. Thomas Berry: Selected Writings on the Earth Community (Modern Spiritual Masters) (p. 12). Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.