Iona Spirituality Institute
The Thomas Berry Forum for Ecological Dialogue at Iona Celebrates Earth Week
REEL EARTH Cinema presents
THE GREAT STORY
A Tribute to Thomas Berry
As a pioneer in the field of spirituality and ecology, Thomas Berry created a quiet revolution. He was a monk, a cultural historian, an author, a teacher, and a mystic. He called himself a ‘geologian,’ and is hailed as the deep voice and visionary guiding and inspiring the contemporary environmental movement. Berry’s challenge to re-imagine a way of being Earth is transforming the worlds of education, law, medicine and religion.
Berry saw his life work as waking us up to the sacred story of a living universe, and summons us to awaken to our great destiny as the human species. He called us ‘mad’ for the way we are despoiling our home, our planet, its beauty, and its living systems. He was a force that reminded us that we are living through the greatest extinction spasm of the past 65 million years. We are the ones responsible. Berry urged us to change our ways, and wisely offers viable pathways to a new future.
At the heart of the film is Berry’s experience of the universe as a cosmic liturgy. He reminds us that ‘we are not a collection of objects but a communion of subjects. His values were rooted in a sacred cosmology which includes the entire natural world. The mountains, rivers, birds, fish, all living organisms are not there for our use, but for a union which is needed for us to become who we are. As Berry said, ‘I am not myself without everything else.’
Join us for this opportunity to meet one of the great thinkers of our century, and share in the creative dialogue that will empower us to carry on ‘The Great Work’ of re-imagining our life on this Earth.
Romita Auditorium at Iona College
New Rochelle, NY
Wednesday, April 24, 2013, 7pm
Offering: $5
Contact us: kdeignan@iona.edu / 914 633 2590