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If the religious experience were simply some naive impression of the uninformed it would not have resulted in such intellectual insight, such spiritual exaltation, such spectacular religious ritual, or in the immense volume of song and poetry and literature and dance that humans have produced.

Thomas Berry

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Thomas Berry
Age: 94 †
Born: 1914
Born: November 9
Died: 2009
Died: June 1
Author
Cultural Historian
Environmentalist
Theologian
Writer
Greensboro
North Carolina
Art
Poetry
Volume
Humans
Simply
Ritual
Would
Literature
Immense
Religious
Produced
Uninformed
Religion
Insight
Resulted
Spiritual
Impression
Exaltation
Song
Dance
Spectacular
Experience
Intellectual
Naive

More quotes by Thomas Berry

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Even as regards Earth we are more committed to history than to geography, more committed to time than to space. History is endless. Place is limited.
Thomas Berry
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Once you adopt and communicate a quality policy, stick with it, live it, and protect it. You get only one chance!
Thomas Berry
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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.
Thomas Berry
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The child awakens to a universe. The mind of the child to a world of meaning. Imagination to a world of beauty. Emotions to a world of intimacy. It takes a universe to make a child both in outer form and inner spirit. It takes a universe to educate a child. A universe to fulfill a child.
Thomas Berry
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Of all the issues we are concerned with at present, the most basic issue, in my estimation, is that of human-earth relations.
Thomas Berry
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Traditions cannot themselves, simply with their own powers, do what needs to be done. These earlier experiences and accomplishments were dealing with other issues, providing guidance for different worlds than the world of the early twenty-first century.
Thomas Berry
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As humans we are born of the Earth, nourished by the Earth, healed by the Earth.
Thomas Berry
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We must now understand that our own well-being can be achieved only through the well-being of the entire natural world around us.
Thomas Berry
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The time has come to lower our voices, to cease imposing our mechanistic patterns on the biological processes of the earth, to resist the impulse to control, to command, to force, to oppress, and to begin quite humbly to follow the guidance of the larger community on which all life depends.
Thomas Berry
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The present urgency is to begin thinking within the context of the whole planet, the integral earth community with all its human and other-than-human components.
Thomas Berry
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We lose our souls if we lose the experience of the forest, the butterflies, the song of the birds, if we can't see the stars at night.
Thomas Berry
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So long as we are under the illusion that we know best what is good for the earth and for ourselves, then we will continue our present course, with its devastating consequences on the entire Earth community... We need only listen to what the Earth is telling us... the time has come when we will listen, or we will die.
Thomas Berry
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But if a peaceful world is beyond politics it is also beyond religions as these presently exist. A change is needed in every phase of human life. This lies mainly in recognition that the micro phase, the particular or national traditions, must find their context and fulfillment in the macro phase, the global or panhuman phase of human existence.
Thomas Berry
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The universe is the primary revelation of the divine, the primary scripture, the primary locus of divine-human communication.
Thomas Berry
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We see quite clearly that what happens to the nonhuman, happens to the human. What happens to the outer world, happens to the inner world.
Thomas Berry
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Vegetarianism is a way of life that we should all move toward for economic survival, physical well-being and spiritual integrity.
Thomas Berry
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The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.
Thomas Berry
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Diversity is the magic. It is the first manifestation, the first beginning of the differentiation of a thing and of simple identity. The greater the diversity, the greater the perfection.
Thomas Berry
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From a large planet of overwhelming magnitude, unlimited resources and endless mystery, the Earth has suddenly become a small planet, thoroughly explored, limited in resources, and reduced in mystery.
Thomas Berry
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The excitement of life is in the numinous experience wherein we are given to each other in that larger celebration of existence in which all things attain their highest expression, for the universe, by definition, is a single gorgeous celebratory event.
Thomas Berry