Reverend Fr. Thomas Berry C.P. (1914 - 2009)
Thomas Berry passed away early on the morning of June 1st at Wellspring home where he had been living in Greensboro, North Carolina. He died peacefully and with family at his side.
Thomas Berry was born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1914. 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."
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. He lived in China and traveled to other parts of Asia. He authored two books on Asian religions, Buddhism and Religions of India (distributed by Columbia University Press).
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. His major contributions to the discussion on the environment are in his books 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).
This August two more books of his essays will be published: The Sacred Universe (Columbia University) and The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth (Orbis Books).
He has been a great gift in our lives - and in many others' as well. His warmth, humor, and insight have enhanced so many gatherings and his writings will remain as a remarkable legacy of a brilliant mind.
Thomas will be buried at the Green Mountain Monastery in Greensboro, Vermont on June 8th. We are also planning a memorial service in New York this September at the Cathedral of St John the Divine where Paul Winter will play and Brian Swimme and others will speak. We will keep you posted on this.
His family has requested that in lieu of flowers donations can be made in his memory to:
The Thomas Berry Foundation
c/o Mary Evelyn Tucker & John Grim
29 Spoke Drive
Woodbridge, CT 06525
SO many beautiful tributes are coming from across North America and around the world, suggesting that today marks a new beginning for carrying on the "great work" he began.
(Mary Evelyn Tucker
Yale University)
With our warm wishes,
Mary Evelyn & John
Poem for Thomas Berry By Drew Dellinger
we were dreamed
in the cores
of the stars.
like the stars,
we were meant to unfold
we were dreamed in the depths
of the undulating ocean.
like the waves,
we were meant to unfold
like bursting supernovas, birthing elements,
which crucibles give rise to creativity?
the world makes us
its instrument.
Father Thomas,
speaking for stars, in a voice
old as wind: ‘origin moments
are supremely important’
what are the origins
of a prophet?
found in syllables of Sanskrit,
or Chinese characters?
in a decade of midnight prayer?
in childhood epiphanies
rising like heat?
blue Carolina sky;
dark pines;
crickets;
birds;
sunlight
on the lilies,
in the meadow,
across the creek.
born in Carolina
on the eve of the Great War,
Saturn conjoining Pluto in the sky.
raised in a world of wires and wheels,
watching dirt roads turn to pavement.
brooding intensity,
measuring loss
when others could see only progress.
white hair communing with angels of Earth
Father Thomas, reminding us
we are constantly bathed in shimmering memories
of originating radiance
we are constantly bathed in shimmering memories
of originating radiance
the psychic stars:
the conscious soil:
this thin film of atmosphere;
and only gravity
holding the sea from the stars.
when a vision of the universe takes hold
in your mind, your soul becomes vast as the cosmos.
when the mind is silent,
everything is sacred.
like the spiral
like the lotus
like the waves
like the trees
like the stars,
we were meant to unfold.
--Drew Dellinger (
www.drewdellinger.org
)
There is also further information and a longer biography of Thomas Berry at: www.thomasberry.org/Biography/index.html
