Thomas Berry

•Thomas Berry was born in

Greensboro, North Carolina in 1914.
The third of thirteen children in a
middle-class Catholic family, he
managed to develop a congenial
relationship with his parents, but at
the same time a certain distance.

•By age eight, he had concluded that

commercial values were threatening
life on the planet. Three years later he
had an epiphany in a meadow, which
became a primary reference point for
the rest of his life.
Raised in a large family with
what he calls “healthy
neglect,” William Nathan Berry
(named after his father) spent
his childhood roaming the
woods and meadows around
his home in Greensboro, N.C.
At the age of 11, he says, his
sense of “the natural world in
its numinous presence” came
to him when he discovered a
new meadow on the outskirts
of the town to which his family
had just moved. “The field was
covered with white lilies rising
above the thick grass. A magic
moment, this experience gave
to my life something that
seems to explain my thinking
at a more profound level than
almost any other experience I
can remember.”
 It was not only the lilies, he says.
“It was the singing of the crickets
and the woodlands in the distance
and the clouds in the clear sky. …
This early experience has remained
with me ever since as the basic
determinant of my sense of reality
and values. Whatever fosters this
meadow is good. What does harm
to this meadow is not good.” By
extension, he says, “a good
economic, or political, or
educational system is one that
would preserve that meadow and a
good religion would reveal the
deeper experience of that meadow
and how it came into being.”
Berry reflects, “It was a wonder
world that I have carried in my
unconscious and that has evolved
all my thinking.”
At age 20, Berry entered
a monastery of the
Passionist order
(ordained 1942) and,
traveling widely, he
began examining
cultural history and
foundations of diverse
cultures and their
relations with the
natural world.

From his academic

beginnings as a
historian of world
cultures and religions,
Berry developed into a
historian of the Earth
and its evolutionary
processes. He describes
himself as a
"geologian".
For two decades, he directed
the Riverdale Center of
Religious Research along the
Hudson River. During this
period he taught at Fordham
University where he chaired
the history of religions
program and directed 25
doctoral theses.

He founded and directed

the
Riverdale Center of Religi
ous Research
in Riverdale, New York
(1970-1995).
Berry wrote numerous articles
on Asian religions in addition
to two books, one on
Buddhism (1966) and the other
on Religions of India (1971).
Both have been recently
reprinted by Anima Press.
Berry received his Ph.D. in
European Intellectual History with
a thesis on Giambattista Vico's
philosophy of history. Widely read
in Western history, he also spent
many years studying the cultural
history of Asia.

Berry began his teaching of

Asian religions at Seton Hall
(1956- 1960) and St. John's
University (1960-1966) and
eventually moved to Fordham
University (1966-1979). He also
offered courses at Columbia,
Drew, and the University of San
Diego.

He taught the cultural history of

India and China at universities in
New Jersey and New York (1956-
1965).
Berry studied and was
influenced by the work of
Teilhard de Chardin and was
president of the American
Teilhard Association (1975-
1987). He has also studied
Native American culture and
shamanism.

Among advocates of
deep ecology and
"ecospirituality" he is famous
for proposing that a deep
understanding of the history
and functioning of the evolving
universe is a necessary
inspiration and guide for our
own effective functioning as
individuals and as a species. He
is considered a leader in the
tradition of Teilhard de Chardin.
 His main contributions:

The Dream of the Earth

(Sierra Club Books, 1988
reprinted, 2006),

The Great Work: Our Way

into the Future (Random
House, 1999) and, with
Brian Swimme, The
Universe Story (Harper San
Francisco, 1992).

His latest collection of

essays is Evening Thoughts:
Reflecting on Earth as Sacred
Community (Sierra Club
Books and University of
California Press, 2006).
Fr. Thomas Berry, described in Newsweek magazine in
1989 as “the most provocative figure among the new
breed of eco-theologians,” was among the first to say
the earth crisis is fundamentally a spiritual crisis.

Berry, 84, is one of today’s most probing thinkers on

the human relationship with the natural world and its
implications for religion. His diagnosis of our spiritual
condition rings true for many who are willing and able
to work for a cure.
“Firstly, the primary status of the
universe. The universe is, ‘the only
self-referential reality in the
phenomenal world. It is the only text
without context. Everything else has
to be seen in the context of the
universe’. The second element is the
significance of story, and in
particular the universe as story. ‘The
universe story is the quintessence of
reality. We perceive the story. We put
it in our language, the birds put it in
theirs, and the trees put it in theirs.
We can read the story of the universe
in the trees. Everything tells the story
of the universe. The winds tell the
story, literally, not just imaginatively.
The story has its imprint everywhere,
and that is why it is so important to
know the story. If you do not know
the story, in a sense you do not know
yourself; you do not know
anything.’”
In a short monograph
written over 25 years ago
and published in 1968
Berry demonstrates the
originality of his
interpretations of the
spiritual dynamics of
Asian religious thought.
Titled "Five Oriental
Philosophies"

To understand more about

Berry and his Philosophy,
Let’s go to his New Story