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Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community by Mary Evelyn Tucker, Thomas Berry
lsparrow's review
4.0
A collection of essays reflection on the our community with the earth. Many of the essays look at issues of ethics, religion, politics and ecology and the writing at times is a bit dense. I did love the ideas about living in community with the earth and about our insepreable link to this planet.
richardwells's review
4.0
A few weeks ago, I read and reviewed "Cosmogenesis," by Brian Thomas Swimme. I pretty much damned it with faint praise, but mentioned I was going to check in on his mentor, Thomas Berry. I have, and I've been moved by Father Berry's exegesis of the cosmic order, and of our place in that order.
Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as a Sacred Community, is a collection of directed essays that advance the notion of a cosmo-genesis, with a story that includes humanity, but is not human-centric. It's the same story his mentee has to tell, only without the angst of memoir, or the hyperbole of conversion.
If you can accept the notion that there is intelligence without thought, as in the intelligence of a plant as it bends toward the sun, then the idea of an intelligent universe is not a great leap. Fr. Berry's contention is that the expansion and development of the universe (which means all things in it) has been as inevitable as a plant's turn toward the sun. The universe is an order, and it is in order, and we are an intrinsic part of the whole. Not only that, but for whatever reason, we are the only creatures we know of capable of studying and reflecting upon this awesome creation. (Awesome, as in, generative of fear and trembling for the nature of its grandeur and power.)
Night Thoughts has been an eye opening read, and I recommend it to anyone who accepts creation as a wonder to behold.
Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as a Sacred Community, is a collection of directed essays that advance the notion of a cosmo-genesis, with a story that includes humanity, but is not human-centric. It's the same story his mentee has to tell, only without the angst of memoir, or the hyperbole of conversion.
If you can accept the notion that there is intelligence without thought, as in the intelligence of a plant as it bends toward the sun, then the idea of an intelligent universe is not a great leap. Fr. Berry's contention is that the expansion and development of the universe (which means all things in it) has been as inevitable as a plant's turn toward the sun. The universe is an order, and it is in order, and we are an intrinsic part of the whole. Not only that, but for whatever reason, we are the only creatures we know of capable of studying and reflecting upon this awesome creation. (Awesome, as in, generative of fear and trembling for the nature of its grandeur and power.)
Night Thoughts has been an eye opening read, and I recommend it to anyone who accepts creation as a wonder to behold.
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