Becoming Planetary in a Planetary Crisis: Reflections on Thomas Berry and the Metaphor of Journey
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Becoming Planetary in a Planetary Crisis:
Reflections on Thomas Berry and the Metaphor of Journey
By Matthew T. Riley
Introduction:
“This book is an invitation to a journey into grandeur,” write Brian Swimme and Mary
Evelyn Tucker on the opening page of their book, Journey of the Universe.1 Humans have, they
observe, a “desire to journey and to experience the depths of things.”2 But what does it mean to
“journey?” Where is humanity going? Where is humanity now? Thomas Berry observed that
humanity finds itself to be uprooted at this moment in the story of the universe. We are alienated
and at odds with the cosmos our home. We are wanderers, bodies seemingly lost in the vastness
of the universe as we travel without reference to our origin or knowledge of our end. In some
sense we are planetary beings. Like planets, the lost wanderers of the celestial realm observed by
the ancient Greeks (literally πλανήτης (planētēs), or “wanderer”), we have conceived of
ourselves as mere bodies set adrift in the vast meaninglessness of the cosmos.3
But, perhaps we are not lost. Wandering, in this sense, can be understood as purposeful
wandering – as journeying. Like Ulysses’ welcomed home from his long travels, Berry
suggested, we too might one day be welcomed home to the universe. In this paper, I look into
Berry’s writings to explore the dual nature of journeying: both the problem of alienation and
loneliness that can follow from itinerancy, but also the participatory nature of wandering and the
great celebratory experience of “the depths of things”4 that journeying can bring one towards.
1
Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker, Journey of the Universe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 1.
Ibid., 112.
I first discussed the relationship between being “planetary” and “wandering” in a paper given at a regional meeting of the AAR in 2010. See,
Matthew T. Riley, “A Change of Planetude: Attaining a Sense of Place in the Universe Story, Quantum Physics, and Process Philosophy,” New
England-Maritimes and Mid-Atlantic American Academy of Religion (Regional Meeting, New Brunswick, March 11, 2010). Conference Paper.
4
Swimme and Tucker, Journey, 112.
2
3
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Becoming Planetary in a Planetary Crisis: Reflections on Thomas Berry and the Metaphor of Journey
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The word journey can be significant – and be interpreted – in a number of ways. For the
purposes of this paper, I focus on just one aspect, however – the transformative power of a
journey. Journeys have a way of transforming us; our thoughts, our lives, how we relate to
others, even our very worldviews. Indeed, some of the greatest moments in the transformation of
humanity’s ecological consciousness arose out of journeys: Charles Darwin’s travels aboard the
Beagle revolutionized humanity’s understanding of life itself, Jane Goodall’s journey to Africa
brought us closer to our Chimpanzee cousins, and even Lynn White’s voyage to India more than
a century ago marked an important turning point in the exploration of the relationship between
religious ideas and environmental attitudes.5 But journeying is more than physical journeying.
Journeying can also be an inner process, a symbolic or a spiritual endeavor. Recall, for instance
the inward journey of Gautama as he sat in meditation under the Bodhi tree only to emerge again
as the Buddha, Dante’s imaginative journey through the heavenly spheres, or even the narrative
of the Rama’s exile, his “journey into exile and return.”6
Berry’s own life, one might observe, is also marked by journeys. Early in his life, when
he was just a young boy, Berry’s family moved to the edge of town in Greensboro, North
Carolina. Then, at just eleven years old, Berry remembered how he “wandered down the incline,
crossed the creek, and looked out over the scene.”7 Before him lay a field of white lilies. Beyond
it was a woodland and clouds floating in a blue sky. He describes it as a “magical moment,” a
moment where he was transformed and his entire life was moved to reorientation. It was in this
act of wandering, in this small boyhood journey that his “own understanding of the Great Work
5
For a description of White’s trip to India, see Riley, Matthew T. 2014. “A Spiritual Democracy of All God’s Creatures: Ecotheology and the
Animals of Lynn White, Jr.,” in Divinanimality: Animal Theory, Creaturely Theology, edited by Stephen Moore (New York: Fordham University
Press).
6
Thomas Berry, “Individualism and Holism in Chinese Tradition: The Religious Cultural Context,” in Confucian Spirituality, vol. 1, edited by Tu
Weiming and Mary Evelyn Tucker (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003), 52.
7
Thomas Berry, “The Meadow Across the Creek,” in The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (New York: Harmony/Bell Tower, 1999), 12.
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Becoming Planetary in a Planetary Crisis: Reflections on Thomas Berry and the Metaphor of Journey
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began.”8 It is also in this place where Berry’s personal journey came full circle. Some 70 years
later, Berry returned to his childhood home in Greensboro. There he reflected on his life and
continued with his writing. The recurrence of homecoming is, in fact, an important part of
understanding what it means to journey. The titles of many of Thomas’ writing record this
promise of a return and renewal of a sense of place and belonging. Titles such as “The Dream of
the Earth: Our Way into the Future” and “Returning to Our Native Place” hint at the possibility
of renewed intimacy and a return home.
Three Ways of Understanding “Journey” – Itinerary, Travel, and Symbol.
Looking beyond Berry’s personal life, it is illuminative to examine Berry’s use of the
term journey in his writings. In this discussion, I borrow from Thomas Tweed’s theory of
religion to propose three ways in which Berry’s use of the term journey in his writings can be
understood: journey as itinerary; journey as travel itself; and journey as symbol.9
The first way in which Berry used the metaphor of journeying is to describe an itinerary,
or a suggested route. In this sense, the term journey is used to describe a plan for travel, a
proposed set of normative guidelines for action, or a plan for personal and spiritual growth.
Journey understood as itinerary, in other words, is a path or a way that one can follow. At
various points in Berry’s writings, we can see examples of this such as in his description of the
anticipated southward journey of birds in the Fall.10
Journeys as itineraries therefore can be geographically and metaphorically directional,
such as in the Exodus narrative that Berry alluded to frequently in his writings. Inspired by the
8
Ibid.
I draw inspiration, and borrow terminology, from Thomas Tweed’s theory of religion. See, for example, Thomas A. Tweed. Crossing and
Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
10
Thomas Berry, “The World of Wonder,” in The Sacred Universe: Earth, Spirituality, and Religion in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Mary
Evelyn Tucker (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 170.
9
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Becoming Planetary in a Planetary Crisis: Reflections on Thomas Berry and the Metaphor of Journey
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work of historian Eric Voegelin, Berry used the metaphor of the exodus to describe how
humanity might transform its collective worldviews in order to figuratively journey out of the
terminal Cenozoic period and into new modes of human-Earth flourishing in the Ecozoic. Thus,
as itineraries, journey can simultaneously connote directionality, orientations, plans for renewal,
and more.
Journeys, as we see, are more than just descriptions and plans for physical journey, one
can also conceive of them in terms of guidelines for moral actions and as proposed sets of ethical
principles. Berry’s telling of the New Story is perhaps the most salient example of how
journeying can be understood as an itinerary aimed at establishing normative action. It is a story
about where humanity has been and where it is going. It is, in a sense, an itinerary for a great
transformative journey across all scales: the physical, the spiritual, and also at the emotional,
psychological, and intellectual levels. It provides, to borrow language from John Grim and Mary
Evelyn Tucker’s book Ecology and Religion, a mode for orienting, grounding, nurturing, and
transforming.
Journeys, as evidenced in Berry’s writings, can be further understood in a second way: as
embodied travels, or as movement through time and space. They can be, in other words, spatialtemporal events grounded in physical space-time. In regards to the journey of the universe itself,
he spoke of the transformation of the universe in a comprehensive sense:
“We are speaking here of the more comprehensive journey of the emergent
universe, a unique and irreversible journey of galactic systems, of Earth formation,
of living forms, of human community—a journey passing through a sequence of
unpredictable discontinuities more extensive than is generally thought possible or
even desirable in a more traditional context.”11
But, one must exercise caution when speaking of journey only in terms of temporal
development, Berry observed. He noted that “[f]or the Western world the basic symbolism is
11
Berry, “Individualism and Holism,” 52.
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Becoming Planetary in a Planetary Crisis: Reflections on Thomas Berry and the Metaphor of Journey
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more temporal than spatial”12 and that the evolutionary journey of the universe has largely been
understood in the West within a “time developmental context.”13 Preferencing the temporal over
the spatial has led to alienation in the western world. He spoke of a “sense of progress and of
journey” that has dominated Western thought from the “biblical journey” up through the
“journey of social improvement” envisioned by St. Simon and Marx and into the “immense
journey of the universe” revealed by science today.14 Berry contrasted these temporal
understandings of journeying with the spatial understanding found in Chinese philosophy and
religion. Here, journey can be understood not just as a journey through space, as a travelling, but
also as grounding and orienting in a physical location in space-time.
Journeys can also be understood as symbols, or symbolic representations. This third way
of understanding the metaphor of journey in Berry’s writings can denote narratives of journeys
and ritual enactment of travels and transformations. These can have an emotive or a spiritual
character to them. Berry turned to the symbol of journey to draw attention to the ways in which
narrative and story can impact human ways of knowing. Most notably, he drew upon the heroic
journey archetype15 and the symbolic journey of the shaman as a means of discussing ways of
knowing. Of the shaman, for instance, he wrote, “the shamanic personality journeys into the far
regions of the cosmic mystery and brings back the vision and the power needed by the human
community at the most elementary level.”16 Symbolic journeys such as the shamanic transversal
of the axis mundi to bring back blessings to her community from a higher realm were, for Berry,
a means of connecting to something larger.17 They are inward journeys that match the outward
encounter of wonder that one might have towards the world. These symbolic journeys are
12
Ibid.
Thomas Berry, “Reinventing the Human,” in The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (New York: Harmony/Bell Tower, 1999), 162.
14
Berry, “Individualism and Holism,” 53.
15
See, for example, Berry, “Reinventing the Human,” 160.
16
Thomas Berry, “The Dream of the Earth: Our Way into the Future” in The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988), 211.
17
See, for example, Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities (New
York: Harper, 1960).
13
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Becoming Planetary in a Planetary Crisis: Reflections on Thomas Berry and the Metaphor of Journey
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simultaneously personal, spiritual journeys and outward journeys of connection and community
building.
From the example of the symbolic journey, Berry established the need for, and efficacy
of, the New Story. In his words:
“The story represents a transition in human awareness from the universe as
cosmos to the universe as cosmogenesis. It represents a shift in the spiritual path
from a mandala-like journey to the center of an abiding world to the great
irreversible journey of the universe itself as the primary sacred journey. This
journey of the universe is the journey of each individual being in the universe. So
this story of the great journey is an exciting revelatory story that gives us our
macrophase identity—the larger dimension of meaning that we need.”18
The New Story, therefore, is journeying in all three regards: it is an itinerary, or a plan
for ethical and communal transformation. As a journey from the great flaring forth to the
emergence of life and the entering of the human into the Ecozoic, it is a journey that is actual
travel through reality in both its spatial and temporal aspects. And finally as a symbolic journey,
it is a spiritual transformation and a reconnecting of the human and the more than human.
Journeying, however, is also something that is greater than the sum of these parts. The journey
described in the New Story can be, in other words, all of these things and more.
Conclusion – Our Journey into the Future:
Let us conclude by turning to the problem of alienation that concerned Berry so deeply
and that informs Journey of the Universe. To quote Berry once more:
“Overcoming alienation in all its forms: self-alienation, social alienation,
alienation in our spiritual, religious, and aesthetic lives, requires stepping into the
spatial presence that we are ourselves of the larger universe. […] Now, we realize
that journey, fragmentation, and wholeness reside both within and without us and
require our attention and presence.”19
18
Thomas Berry, “Appendix: Reinventing the Human at the Species Level,” in The Christian Future and The Fate of Earth, edited by Mary
Evelyn Tucker and John Grim (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009), 121.
19
Thomas Berry, “Alienation in a Universe of Presence,” Teilhard Studies 48 (Spring 2004), 19. Emphasis added.
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Becoming Planetary in a Planetary Crisis: Reflections on Thomas Berry and the Metaphor of Journey
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But what sort of presence shall we strive for? In the Journey of the Universe book,
Swimme and Tucker observe that “[w]e are finding ourselves in the midst of a vast transition.”
“How are we to respond?” they ask. “With what shall we navigate?”20 Here, I turn again to the
term planetary. In Berry’s words, “[h]umans as a planetary presence are currently terminating
the Cenozoic era of Earth history and entering the Ecozoic era.”21
Similarly, Swimme and Tucker reflect upon humanity’s “journey into planetary
presence.” They lament that humanity, as a global force, has encircled the globe in “a wave of
loss”22 and that we have brought with us a widespread “diminishment of life” to our
surroundings.23 Drawing upon Berry, Swimme and Tucker observe that there is a great paradox
in being planetary: While humanity intended to prosper in the world, to make it a better place to
live, that when viewed from an ecological vantage point humanity has accomplished the
opposite.24 In the quest to become a planetary presence, humanity has learned to live off the
Earth, but we haven’t yet learned to live on the Earth; Intimacy has been abandoned for progress.
But to be planetary beings, I argue, is to be more than a destructive force on Earth’s ecosystems.
Earlier I suggested that to be planetary is to wander. But, if humanity is to enter into the Ecozoic
era, then perhaps we must do more than wander – we must learn to journey.
To journey into an ecologically flourishing future, as Berry’s usage of the term suggests,
is to embrace a certain sense of directionality. To journey is to simultaneously have an itinerary,
a plan for travel, a guiding moral force; it is the act of travel itself, or purposeful action and
movement through time and space; and journeying is also symbolic in nature, it is an
20
Journey, 111.
Thomas Berry, “Earth as Sacred Community,” in Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community, edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker
(San Francisco and Berkeley: Sierra Club and The University of California Press, 2006), 45. Emphasis added.
22
Swimme and Tucker, Journey, 94.
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid., 102.
21
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Becoming Planetary in a Planetary Crisis: Reflections on Thomas Berry and the Metaphor of Journey
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establishment of worldviews and a way into the sacred and mysterious. To journey, therefore,
requires that while humanity must have a sense of place and of rootedness in our bioregions, we
must also be cognizant of our directionality – morally, culturally, and spiritually. We must be
seek community, we must strive towards intimacy, and we must yearn deeply to be at home in
the universe.
To conclude, I want to draw upon Berry’s poignant words from the talk Berry gave
fourteen years ago at the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders. In
that talk, which is reprinted under the title “Evening Thoughts,” he invited his audience to “recall
the ancient law of hospitality, whereby the wanderer was welcomed.”25 Just as Ulysses – even
after the greatest of struggles – was welcomed home from his long travels, Thomas suggested
that we too will be welcomed home by the universe in our own journeys. “As a final reflection,”
he continues, “I would suggest that we see these early years of the twenty-first century as the
period when we discover the great community of Earth, a comprehensive community of all the
living and nonliving components of the planet. We are just discovering that the human project is
itself a component of the Earth project, that our intimacy with Earth is our way to intimacy with
each other. Such are the foundations of our journey into the future.”26
References
Berry, Thomas. 1988. “The Dream of the Earth: Our Way into the Future.” In The Dream of the
Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988.
------. 1988. “The New Story.” In The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra
Club Books. http://www.journeyoftheuniverse.org/storage/Berry--The_New_Story.pdf.
25
26
Berry, “Evening Thoughts,” 140. Emphasis added.
Ibid., 141.
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Becoming Planetary in a Planetary Crisis: Reflections on Thomas Berry and the Metaphor of Journey
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Oct. 29, 2014
------. 1988. “Returning to Our Native Place.” In The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra
Club Books, 1988.
------. 1999. “The Meadow Across the Creek.” In The Great Work: Our Way into the Future.
New York: Harmony/Bell Tower, 1999.
------. “Reinventing the Human.” In The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. New York:
Harmony/Bell Tower, 1999.
------. 2003. “Individualism and Holism in Chinese Tradition: The Religious Cultural Context.”
In Confucian Spirituality. Vol. 1. Edited by Tu Weiming and Mary Evelyn Tucker. New
York: Crossroad Publishing Company.
------. 2004. “Alienation in a Universe of Presence.” Teilhard Studies 48 (Spring).
------. 2006. “Earth as Sacred Community.” In Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred
Community. Edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker. San Francisco and Berkeley: Sierra Club
and The University of California Press.
------. 2006. “Evening Thoughts.” In Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred
Community. Edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker. San Francisco and Berkeley: Sierra Club
and The University of California Press.
------. 2009. “Appendix: Reinventing the Human at the Species Level.” In The Christian Future
and The Fate of Earth. Edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books.
------. 2009. “The World of Wonder.” In The Sacred Universe: Earth, Spirituality, and Religion
in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Eliade, Mircea. Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths
and Archaic Realities. New York: Harper, 1960.
The Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale. Website. http://fore.research.yale.edu/
Grim, John and Mary Evelyn Tucker. 2014. Ecology and Religion. Washington DC: Island Press.
Journey of the Universe. Website. http://www.journeyoftheuniverse.org/
Riley, Matthew T. 2010. “A Change of Planetude: Attaining a Sense of Place in the Universe
Story, Quantum Physics, and Process Philosophy,” New England-Maritimes and MidAtlantic American Academy of Religion, Regional Meeting, New Brunswick, March 11,
2010. Conference Paper.
9
Becoming Planetary in a Planetary Crisis: Reflections on Thomas Berry and the Metaphor of Journey
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Oct. 29, 2014
------. 2014. “A Spiritual Democracy of All God’s Creatures: Ecotheology and the Animals of
Lynn White, Jr.” In Divinanimality: Animal Theory, Creaturely Theology. Edited by
Stephen Moore. New York: Fordham University Press.
Swimme, Brian and Mary Evelyn Tucker. 2011. Journey of the Universe. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
------. 2011. Journey of the Universe. Film.
------. 2011. Journey of the Universe: Conversations. DVD Series.
Tweed, Thomas A. 2006. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
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