Partnership for Earth Spirituality
Earth Seminars

The Partnership conducts earth spirituality seminars held each month in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Brief papers or other materials are prepared and posted on the Partnership's website in advance of each meeting. Should you wish to be added to the listserv receiving notification, please contact Joan Brown.

To read essays and comments on past seminars please click here.


Thursday, December 7

End of the Year Earth Reflections

Thomas Berry’s new book, Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community will offer the basis for the monthly Earth Seminar. In the three sections of the book Thomas describes: the magnitude of our current ecological crisis and its causes; specific challenges; a return to the epic of evolution as a context for situating the role of the human. We will reflect upon aspects of Berry’s thoughts bringing it home to our own thoughts on the year just passing.

Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community, Thomas Berry, Sierra Club Books. San Francisco. 2006

I placed a pre-order for Thomas Berry’s newest book in June when I knew it would be available in the fall. When the book arrived a month ago, I opened it like a precious birthday gift. Some books, written later in life by favorite authors, hold thoughts that have already been expressed countless times or are mere compilations of previous works.

Evening Thoughts, a compilation of essays from various years and occasions, however, expands and deepens ideas articulated in earlier writings and opens the reader to new insights into the ecological crisis and its spiritual dimensions. While Berry’s concern and alarm are prevalent throughout the pages, his writing inspires and invites us to create a true and deep partnership within the Earth Community.

Berry’s invitation is especially pertinent in this season of Peace on Earth. “What we look for is no longer the Pax Romana, the peace of imperial Rome, nor is it simply like Pax Humana, the peace among humans, but the Pax Gaia, the peace of Earth and every being on the Earth. This is the original and final peace….”

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