Berry was a gentle soul whose intimacy with nature and broad erudition enabled him to speak with a compelling voice about the immense story behind creation and this precious life on Earth, declaring “the Universe is primarily a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.”

He was painfully cognizant of the roots of our disconnection from and desecration of the natural world, and at the same time he gloried in the great gifts it bestows in each moment. He preached the redemptive power of recognizing that “the human being is less a being on the Earth or in the universe than a dimension of the Earth and indeed of the universe itself.”

His message was tinged with wonder and warning, with reverence and a “sense of the numinous.” And he held hope for an integral planetary community including all human and non-human constituents ushering in an Ecozoic era where every being has its rightful place, role and voice.

Rich Heffern recounts: “Berry 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,’ he said. ‘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 said. ‘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 said, ‘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.’

He believed the only way to effectively function as individuals and as a species is to understand the history and functioning of our planet and of the wide universe itself, like sailors learning about their ship and the vast ocean on which it sails. ‘It takes a universe to make a child,’ he said, adding that he was ‘trying to establish a functional cosmology, not a theology.’ The amazing, mind-boggling cosmological perspective, he felt, can resuscitate human meaning and direction. The most important spiritual qualities, for Berry, were amazement and enchantment. Awe is healing. A sense of wonder is the therapy for our disconnection from the natural world.”

Drew Dellinger recalls Fr. Thomas speaking: “The Earth is precious. Species are precious,” he said, in that hushed, wavering voice that made you feel like you were listening to Lao Tzu himself. “Reverence will be total or it will not be at all,” he said. “Celebration is the key to the future.” Then Dellinger adds: “Thomas has a way of making you feel the immensity, the magnificence, and the mystery of the cosmos. He baptizes you into the presence of the galaxies, and transmits the sacredness and unity of the universe. Berry makes you feel your cosmic identity, and your connection to the Earth and the universe as an unfolding process.”

Matthew Fox wrote: “Thomas calls all of us to fall in love with the world in spite of the folly of human history. When he says ‘ecology is functional cosmology’—he creates a context in which we can recover the zeal that comes from falling in love with the world once again. He puts our own personal and collective histories into a sacred context by reminding us that the primary sacrament is the universe itself. Every other sacrament, being and action is derivative of that holy sacrament. Berry’s notorious remark—that we should ‘put the Bible on a shelf for twenty years’—simply reflects a logical conclusion that to find that balance anew we must devote ourselves more to the revelation of nature, its mysticism and the ethics to be derived from that. He calls us as the prophets of old did to the Great Work and thus to leave trivial work behind. He calls us to reach for the Ecozoic Age and indeed, to ‘reinvent our species.’ His work is a profound work of human healing because it restores that lost identity and relationship and passion between the human and the cosmos.”

Quotations from Thomas Berry

The universe itself is the primary sacred community. All human religion should be considered as participation in the religious aspect of the universe itself. It is false to say that humanity is the most excellent being in the universe. The most excellent being in the universe is the universe itself.

Our difficulty is that we have become autistic. We no longer listen to what the Earth, its landscape, its atmospheric phenomena and all its living forms, its mountains and valleys, the rain, the wind, and all the flora and fauna of the planet are telling us.

Our present urgency is to recover a sense of the primacy of the Universe as our fundamental context, and the primacy of the Earth as the matrix from which life has emerged and on which life depends. Recovering this sense is essential to establishing the framework for mutually enhancing human-Earth relations for the flourishing of life on the planet.

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.

The deepest cause of the present devastation is found in a mode of consciousness that has established a radical discontinuity between the human and other modes of being and the bestowal of all rights on the humans.

All human activities, professions, programs, and institutions must henceforth be judged primarily by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore, or foster a mutually enhancing human/Earth relationship.

In reality, there is a single integral community of the Earth that includes all its component members whether human or other than human. In this community every being has its own role to fulfill, its own dignity, its own inner spontaneity. Every being has its own voice. Every being declares itself to the entire universe. Every being enters into communion with other beings.

In every phase of our imaginative, aesthetic, and emotional lives we are profoundly dependent on this larger context of the surrounding world.

For peoples, generally, their story of the universe and the human role within the universe is their primary source of intelligibility and value. Only through this story of how the Universe came to be in the beginning and how it came to be as it is does a person come to appreciate the meaning of life or to derive the psychic energy needed to deal effectively with those crisis moments that occur in the life of the individual and in the life of the society. Such a story communicates the most sacred of mysteries. Our story not only interprets the past, it also guides and inspires our shaping of the future.

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.

Both education and religion need to ground themselves within the story of the universe as we now understand this story through empirical knowledge. Within this functional cosmology, we can overcome our alienation and begin the renewal of life on a sustainable basis. This story is a numinous revelatory story that could evoke the vision and the energy required to bring not only ourselves but the entire planet into a new order of magnificence.

The basic mood of the future might well be one of confidence in the continuing revelation that takes place in and through the Earth. If the dynamics of the Universe from the beginning shaped the course of the heavens, lighted the Sun, and formed the Earth, if this same dynamism brought forth the continents and seas and atmosphere, if it awakened life in the primordial cell and then brought into being the unnumbered variety of living beings, and finally brought us into being and guided us safely through the turbulent centuries, there is reason to believe that this same guiding process is precisely what has awakened in us our present understanding of ourselves and our relation to this stupendous process. Sensitized to such guidance from the very structure and functioning of the Universe, we can have confidence in the future that awaits the human venture.

Wildness we might consider as the root of the authentic spontaneities of any being. It is that wellspring of creativity whence comes the instinctive activities that enable all living beings to obtain their food, to find shelter, to bring forth their young: to sing and dance and fly through the air and swim through the depths of the sea. This is the same inner tendency that evokes the insight of the poet, the skill of the artist and the power of the shaman.

http://www.thomasberry.org/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/us/04berry.html

Also, please read John Michell’s article, “Walking in Paradise or Toward It”, reprinted from Elixir Magazine, Issue Number V, on Walking.

David Fideler, writer and editor

John Michell was always on the lookout for the key that, once turned, would allow us to see the world from a deeper, transformed perspective.

At the beginning of his seminal work, The View Over Atlantis, he illustrated this idea with the story of antiquarian John Aubrey (1626–97). One day Aubrey was riding his horse by the town of Avebury, not far from Stonehenge. Suddenly, in a flash, Aubrey realized that the entire village was built within a huge, megalithic structure: a prehistoric temple. But for hundreds of years, the townspeople had not noticed it, simply owing to its sheer size.

John used this idea of a large, unseen structure to describe his idea of Atlantis. In this reading, “Atlantis” is not a place or even a civilization, but the prehistoric code of knowledge that inspired the great megalithic builders.

Ultimately, his work was based on an instinctive affinity for the thought of both Plato and Charles Fort. Following Plato, John always sought out the highest vision and “best possible account,” yet tempered it with skepticism for rigid belief systems and a humorous appreciation for human obsessions and eccentricities.

John resonated with the Platonic (and Pythagorean) insight that reality is archetypal in nature, and that the most fundamental ordering principle at work in the universe is number and harmony. The cosmos, as John liked to point out, has no difficulty harmonizing all the conflicting elements within it.

Charles Fort, the American journalist and chronicler of strange phenomena, provided him with a healthy skepticism of official science and dogmatic explanations, which have the effect of over-simplifying the world. As John wrote, “Wherever you look, in archaeology and ancient history or in the modern records of parapsychology and strange phenomena, you find evidence to contradict every theory and ‘certainty’ of official science. The real world is quite different from the way our teachers describe it, and it is a great deal more interesting.”

Coming at things from such a well-informed, deeper angle—which made him unique—John could write about all kinds of eccentric topics, such as UFOs and crop circles, and take them seriously without necessarily believing in specific interpretations. By taking the Fortean approach to “accept everything, but believe nothing,” the mind remains free of dogmatic theories (which become obsessive and self-reinforcing), yet capable of seeing the archetypal patterns of myth that are always at play.

With an ever-present twinkle in his eye, John Michell brought a mind-opening perspective to every topic he wrote about, or discussed in memorable, late-night sessions with friends at his London flat in Notting Hill. He was one of a kind, and showed how you could be a mystic, skeptic, scholar, philosopher, and a student of human folly, obsessions, and eccentricities, all at the same time.

Paul Devereux, specialist in the anthropology of consciousness, archaeoacoustics, and psi phenomena

John Michell's passing is most saddening. He showed me many kindnesses over the years, and we exchanged our last notes literally just a few days before his passing, a scholar and a gentleman to the end. I think his enduring legacy will not be his association with leys ("ley-lines") and other geomantic adventures, about which he could at times be somewhat mischievous, but rather his geometric, geomatric and proportional investigations. That profound probing into the mystery of the cosmos was the work of genius, and will provide the springboard for further research for generations to come.

William Irwin Thompson, cultural historian and founder, Lindisfarne Association

John Michel was a generous and gentle soul who loved the visions offered us in ancient cosmologies as we sped by them on the M5 on our hurried way to spas. With ley lines and stone circles, he rewove the broken web of life and taught us all how to re-spell time and space. With a wonderful twinkle, he would assert the most crankish of ideas—a monarch for Ireland or measuring life with elbows and thumbs instead of meters and liters—and take the time for a scholarship of recovery that was love in action. There was no one like him, and no one to replace him. But we need not grieve, as he lived his life as he chose and was always in a celebratory mode. I remember when he ended his term as Scholar in Residence at Lindisfarne-in-Manhattan, he hired a street musician from the West Village who had come to New York from Appalachia—that hinterland of 18th century migrant Celts—and presented our community with concert of Blue Grass as his farewell back to London. (John was an early Green and loved grass in all its epiphanies!) And so there was, and still is, music as he goes.

Keith B. Critchlow, professor, geometer, and author

Each generation has its messengers. These are sometimes recognised but often not. John Michell was both. He awakened a new wave of interest in Plato as a living practical philosophy as well as reawakening the sense of sacred science. By sacred we mean that which is essential to human life.

John had an exceptionally broad life serving his country in many dimensions. He was an accomplished artist, a practical (mathematical in the true sense) philosopher, a prophet of what attitudes will need to be recovered for Albion to survive the difficulties it is both in and will experience soon.

John’s works are of immense value to the open-minded seeker of truth. His ‘Dimensions of Paradise’ is a special favourite and significant gem.

We acknowledge a deep loss to the nation.

Phyllis Benjamin, President, The International Fortean Organization (INFO)

Requiem for the Long Man of Notting Hill

John Michell was an original who revealed old truths with the skill of the true alchemist and who used those truths to fit the jigsaw pieces of the universal puzzle into art, geometry and language worthy of the Creator.

Not since Charles Fort has a man understood so well that in order to see clearly one cannot be locked into a rigid belief system.  John Michell was a true philosopher king who learned through thoughtful study and careful fieldwork and who then revealed, with the intoxicating, pioneering strokes of his very own palette, the old systems of measures and weights as golden keys to universal truths.  He knew and understood, in the real Platonic sense,  that the universe was governed by universal laws perhaps best expressed by mathematics but also revealed to generation upon generation through not only man’s art but also through the very artistry of the landscape itself.

Ben Johnson said Shakespeare was the soul of the age; John Michell put the soul into this age.

John Michell understood the Cosmic Joker. He was a true Fortean who got the joke and as a result was a merry soul to the end. Like Ben Hecht who, upon reading Charles Fort’s “Book of the Damned”, slapped his forehead saying,... “henceforth I am a fortean”,  upon reading John Michell’s work you too will slap your forehead. But you will say, “henceforth I am a Michellian”.

No doubt he is looking in on all of us but he is also out there measuring the dimensions of Paradise and when he gets to the Golden Throne of Heaven, just think of how many questions he will have answered.

So on behalf of true Forteans everywhere we say a resounding thank you for gracing our lives, a very well done indeed and a Bon Voyage with Love until we meet again.

Additional Tributes Online

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/books/03michell.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/06/john-michell-obituary

The new website also better highlights our four themes: Cosmology, Revelation, Mysticism and Chivalry, and better features the People within our community. Please visit and share the site, and encourage others to join our expanding email list. Help us gather and grow a community dedicated to creating a new planetary civilization for our time. 

The recent war in Gaza was a very difficult chapter in the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians. Many civilians were wounded and killed on both sides, and especially in Gaza. We know that the price of the war is very high, not only in numbers of wounded and killed, but also in its effect on both societies—war results in an increase in fear, anger and hatred.

The war almost destroyed our many years of work building trust and bridges between our peoples, the children of Abraham. Both sides got caught in the illusion that to protect themselves, they "needed to go to war," and that the other side only understands the language of force.

In spite of all this, we have reaffirmed our commitment to continue our work for peace and building bridges. For example, during the time of war, we joined meetings/projects within and between our societies to re-build the trust that was seemingly being lost for good.

Ghassan hosted a special peace prayer gathering for the community of Nazareth to stop the war, and worked with the Muslim community in Nazareth to reduce anger and tension, focusing on how to stop the war, and not feeding the anger and hatred.

Eliyahu during the war joined a silent meditation peace walk on the streets of Jerusalem, calling for compassion and non-violence. Some friends of Eliyahu’s from the Sulha Peace Project organized a humanitarian drive for the people of Gaza. In a matter of days more than 14 overloaded truckloads of blankets, baby food and other supplies were collected from all over Israel and distributed by UNWRA to the people of Gaza.

We believe that this is the time to act. We know that this is a test for our souls in order to show we can succeed in this time with our holy mission for the simple people and good people from both sides.

It has not been easy to do this work now, but the message still comes down to this: "We are the Children of Abraham, we are but one family!!" Right now, we are a very wounded and traumatized family in deep need of healing. We have dedicated ourselves to unite the forces of the spiritual peacemakers, to open up a new chance for peace and love to emerge from the destruction.

To this end, we organized a prayer gathering at Tel Hoshomer hospital in Tel Aviv, where we visited recuperating Israeli soldiers and Palestinians from Gaza. Later our group of religious leaders, the Abrahamic Reunion, went to the Israeli town of Sderot on the Gaza border. We brought with us a group of Christian, Muslim and Druze Arab teenagers to meet there in a reinforced classroom and speak from the heart with a group of Jewish teenagers. With Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Druze religious leaders present, we broadcast a message of love and unity that was seen on the main Israeli TV channel. The meeting was broadcast not only to Israelis but also to the people of Gaza.

We ask that the Seven Pillars community bless us and empower us to continue the sacred work of this path of peace, love and harmony. Please send us your prayers. Thank you for your blessings and support.

Peace, Shalom, Salaam,

Sheikh Ghassan Manasra, Anwar Il-Salaam, Lights of Peace Sufi dialogue center in Nazareth and Jerusalem
Eliyahu McLean, Jerusalem Peacemakers, co-director

For additional information please visit http://www.risingtideinternational.org/peacemakers.htm

***
Eliyahu McLean is the director of the Jerusalem Peacemakers, a group of religious leaders and grassroots peacebuilders in Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Eliyahu organizes monthly inter-religious Israeli-Palestinian peace gatherings in East and West Jerusalem and coordinates the Abrahamic Reunion, a group of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Druze religious leaders working together to re-claim religion as a source for peace. Eliyahu is also a board member and interfaith advisor for the Sulha Peace Project, which hosts an annual event which brings together thousands of Israelis and Palestinians. www.jerusalempeacemakers.org

Ghassan Manasra is the director of Anwar il-Salaam (Lights of Peace), a Muslim peace center in Nazareth promoting tolerance and interfaith dialogue. Ghassan is an ordained sheikh and is the son of Sheikh Abdel Salaam Manasra, the head of the Qadiri Sufi order in the Holy Land.

Over 150 spiritual leaders and practitioners gathered in Aspen, Colorado from November 6th to 9th to explore ways to develop a collective voice for compassion, inclusion and peace in our nation and in the world. The gathering was organized by the Global Peace Initiative of Women, and was motivated by a desire to come together to find: “universal principles that can guide the development of a new consciousness and new way of living, in harmony with our planet’s resources and needs, and in harmony with our fellow human beings.”

GPIW planned this four day reflection to tap a collective spiritual wisdom and explore ways to respond to the crises in our times, with an emphasis on engaging the feminine principles of interdependence, receptivity, connection, inclusion and compassion. The gathering was organized under the direction and guidance of a group of American women of spiritual vision and commitment.

Hope, harmony and cohesion marked the tone of the gathering. We flowed from moments of silence and contemplation and prayer to presentation and dialogue. Perspectives based in diverse religious traditions were offered on ways to bridge the spiritual and political. A space was created where we could explore how a contemplative approach can lead to action and address the challenges of the day. Thirty four proposals emerged from this gathering which ranged from convening a small, diverse group for monthly phone calls that explore the awakening of the feminine, to creating a green global economy based on the principles of restorative development that is equitable, socially just, and respectful of spiritual and cultural diversity. Motivated individuals and groups will need to take the lead to move these proposals forward.

As chair of the Board of Trustees of Seven Pillars, I had the honor of representing and introducing our wisdom school to new people, making connections and identifying synergies for future collaborations. While it is impossible to share the full richness of this event, I offer a few of the thoughts and experiences that have stayed with me:

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi Photo: Cathleen Falsani

• Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, co-chair of GPIW and an organizer of the event, identified three American theologies which need to be changed: the theology of superiority, the theology of success, and the theology of separation.
• Reverend Cynthia Bourgeault, founder of the Aspen Wisdom School, identified three functions of contemplatives which contribute to addressing today’s challenges: speaking as a prophet; teaching the development of the will and intention; and holding what is; i.e., being present to the current conditions. She acknowledged the role contemplatives have in awakening the heart (the true GPS - G-d Positioning System) which, when opened, sees duty and responsibility as part of the human role.
• Orland Bishop, founder of Shade Tree Multicultural Foundation, noted that we live the unfinished lives of our ancestors, moving to overcome the boundaries of self-interest. He identified the American social contract as asking: How do I have to be for you to be free? Orland noted that an economy of compassion is not cash-based. He called for the development of a compassionate and conscious economy, based on a currency that is based on reality and connected to spiritual values.
• Kevin Townley, a student of Western Mysteries/Ageless Wisdom and teacher of alchemy through Seven Pillars, noted that the 12th stage of alchemical transformation transmutes one substance into another by the addition of a life form. He said we can be the leavening for the communities around us that will bring about a transformed culture. He cautioned that we can not do this by our will, but we are each given an assignment, we have accepted it and we will see the perfection of it with our hearts.

A panel of people from other countries offered reflections on the impact America’s leadership has had on the international community. Their messages affirmed the need for transformation:

• Abu Sufian, a young leader for peace from Darfur shared the advice that he had been given when he told friends he was coming to America. They said: “Don’t bring the Koran, don’t tell people that you are Muslim and don’t say your prayers in a public place.” His mother asked that he not let the bright light of America take him away from his culture and values.
• Sakeena Yacoobi, founder and director of the Afghan Institute of Learning, noted that poverty in Afghanistan is wide-spread and all children have experienced trauma. She affirmed that what Afghans want from America is not the American life but jobs, justice, education, housing and health care. Thus far, she noted, the American military has not been helpful.

Photo: Cathleen Falsani

The divine feminine and feminine principles have a transformative function, giving life and healing energies. The participants acknowledged the peaceful and fierce emanations of the divine feminine from different religious traditions. The divine feminine is accessible to both women and men. Rabbis Rami Shapiro and Shefa Gold led us in a chant invoking the divine feminine, allowing us to experience the very qualities needed for the future: Imma Hari Mah; Imma Sophia; Imma Sheckinah; Em Chochma Em.

The closing multi-faith zikr, led by Kabir and Camille Helminski, included Hindu, Muslim and Christian chants ending with repeating choruses of Amazing Grace. This gathering was an amazing opportunity to be in community of like-hearted aspirants who are committed to the transformation of the Nation and the world. May these seeds sprout!