[MUSIC] This is a place where many of us remember Thomas Berry gave summer symposiums many years ago. And it was a time when we could gather and listen to this story as it was first unfolding. This is indeed a moment of great transition for both the Teilhard Association and for Thomas Berry. We are celebrating, as you know, an 80th birthday, and a quarter of that time has been the presence of the Riverdale Center for Religious Research here on the shores of the Hudson River. For some 20 years then the Teilhard Association has had a very special home. For a good number of those years, Thomas Berry was president of the Teilhard Association for ten years. 16 years we have had lectures and meetings here once a month in the Fall and in the Spring. And let me mention they were rent free through the generosity of Thomas Berry. He has indeed then shown us how to create a home. A home in this bioregion, a home along the Hudson River, a home near this great city of New York, a home on this Earth, a home with this Earth. That's the message that Thomas Berry has called us to, and that is what we celebrate today. We have enormous gratitude, each one of us, in our special ways to Thomas Berry. This is a season of thanks, it is an advent of anticipation, and it is Of course a time of birth. So in this moment of transition, we would like to sing out our gratitude to many others who've helped this association this past 20 years. Certainly, Winifred Macculoch with her wonderful work in the perspectives, year after year. Fanny Duberry with so many contributions today. Again, the flowers on the table that she and Gretchen and Imogene helped to place so lovingly. Jim and Jane Ann McPartland with their work in the membership and our annual meeting for which we are deeply grateful. You were cousins or past president and colleague of Thomas's at Fordham University. Donald Grey, our past vice president. And Harry Buck and his work on the publications for many years. Arthur Fable and his editing of the Teilhard studies now carried on by Donald St. John. And Ken DuPee for his secretarial help over and over again with our annual meeting. This year, our annual meeting will again take place at Union Theological Seminary down at Columbia University, and the topic will be Teilhard and the Universe Story. That will be Saturday, April 22 the week after Easter. There's a luncheon at 12 o'clock and the talk will be at 2:00 at Union Theological Seminary Saturday, April 22. Last year's lecture, I should mention, has just been published in the Tielhard Studies. That was John Hoyt from Georgetown University on Chaos Theory. And we have several other Teilhard studies beginning to be born as well. Just another few points about the Teilhard Association, anyone who's interested in membership, there are materials over on the table there or in signing up for our mailing list. Please feel free to do that. Now, a few notes of logistics, a fellow human being who we are celebrating today. I welcome you and I welcome my other half, my better half, John Graham to introduce Thomas Berry. >> [APPLAUSE] >> When the Navajo people speak of travelers, they say the travelers are holy. People on a journey are in holy state. We all travel and at times of transition in seasons such as this the acute angle, the acute perspective we have on that journey, brings me to introduce a speaker whom we all know and who will not be introduced with formal data in his background but rather to suggest three ways of hearing the sound of his remarks. The first that comes to me is a phrase he imparted to so many of us who were graduate students with him the, opening line from Virgil's Aeneid, which in English translation is roughly, what a great labor it was to build Rome. The work that has been going on with the Teilhard Association and the vision that Thomas Barry has given to the association, continues that great work that he speaks of and the power of giving to each of us the sense that we are all doing our great work. It is in all of us identified. Thomas has also spoken of the moments of grace at these difficult transition moments. The possibilities for insight that come when fragmentation occurs, the regathering of creativity, that sense of the discontinuous and the continuous. Listen for the sound in his voice and that meaning that it imparts to you. And finally, at this season of transition, at this moment of grace, we are not alone. We are joined by the great traditions as they have reflected upon the solstice and this change at this moment. Whether we are celebrating with a lighting of candles the endurance against an overwhelming oppressive foe, or whether we hear the cry of a child in a manger, or the birth of a babe from the side of his mother, or the welcoming of friends from afar who share that vision. This time of transition, also the voice of native people's. And where I've gone to visit in the Columbia River Plateau region in Idaho and Washington now, they're also right now, at this moment, they are singing the songs that have returned to them, the songs from the animals, the songs from the plants. This song and the return of the songs is also accompanied by a great spiritual sickness, the sickness that is a reflection upon life and death and what it means for life to take life in order to endure. That fragmentation coalesces in a powerful vision that is not accomplished in an instant, in a moment's imparting that is built of moments over time and such a moment occurs. I call our friend, our mentor, and teacher, Thomas Berg. >> [APPLAUSE] >> It's a touching moment. An important moment, a person might say, together with you all here in this area, in a sense, for the last time that we will meet in such a large assembly of those of us that have been associated with each other over these many years. I came across something not long ago. There's a story of an Indian whose name was Reuben Snake, a rather large person. He did so much for his tribe, I'm not sure exactly which tribe it was, but he was talking with someone, and they were venturing on something of monumental import. And the other person, who was, in fact, a donor, he says, there, this is something awesome to try to do. And here is you and me, and we are nothing. And we must be very foolish to even think of such a thing. The old Indian, rough voiced, yeah, he says, but we'll find good companions on the way. And so, in my own life venture, I found good companions on the way. And from moment to moment, the number is gathered until it seems almost limitless, the number of good companions. There is also a great story of the Chinese. It's more a military story, but the great Qing Dynasty that Qin Shi Huangdi, who set in place the structures, a person might say, of the Chinese Empire that endured for so long. And it was a mighty regime, and they crushed all the opposition and took over China. And they were ruling with a very severe way. And there's a sergeant that was due to show up at a certain place, and he was delayed by the weather. And he and his little band knew that if they got there late, that they will be severely punished and probably executed. And so he decided to take on the issue and simply gather forces to endure revolution and take over the empire. And they had the historian, and China's very good with its historians, tells the story about. And this little band of people with nothing, no armaments, simply took up sticks. And they moved on through the countryside and gathered companions on the way. And in the end, it's just a magnificent telling of the story, of how this situation was so fixed, so mighty, so strong. And this tiny little band, and how this tiny little band gathered the good companions and overthrew the empire, which was so powerful. These are wonderful stories and that the moral of it was that what is needed to conquer a country and what is needed to rule it are not the same. That you can do something with power, but you need something more than power to maintain a viable community. I think we are, to some extent, involved in something roughly of this nature. I was in Florida not long ago, well, I guess a year or so now. I spoke one evening about the difficulties that we faced with the devastation of the natural world. That there is so little attention given to the reconstitution of the North American continent to save its soils, which are getting ruined so extensively. The forests are being destroyed, the pollution of the air, the toxic waste, and the nuclear waste that we still don't know how to store. I went on with that, and then, I was talking about the great work. Every generation has a great work, we might say. And we, in our times, have a great work. Each of us has their individual work. But there's also the great work. And I describe this sometimes in terms of the building of the medieval period. It was a great work after the decline of Rome and the Dark Ages to have a renewal of life, to reconstitute a viable civilization, to establish a Christian world. There was a great and an arduous work that needed to be undertaken. There was the sense of order to be established, universities that were needed, the building of the cathedrals, and so forth. It was a great work. And it was carried out over the centuries in a rather remarkable way. And I sometimes tell the story of the three men carrying stones. And the first was asked, what are you doing? And he said, I'm carrying stones. The second one was asked, what are you doing? And he said, I'm supporting my family, and the third was asked, what are you doing? And he said, I'm building a cathedral. It was very important, we all carry stones, we all support families, but beyond all that is building the cathedral. The building of a meaningful structure to symbolize how our lives are truly fulfilled in some depth, in some divine participation. And that was the great work of the medieval period. We too have a great work, and the great work is moving the whole planet. This is not simply, as in the Middle Ages, the movement out of a declined and a remnant of a former empire into a Medieval period. This was not like the transition from, say, the medieval period to the Renaissance or to the Enlightenment period, to any historical period. It's not even like the movement from the Paleolithic into the Neolithic. What we are faced with is a transformation of the planet itself. Because the planet and its chemistry is being upset in such a way that the life forms are no longer viable. And how to renew the planet, when it's saturated with chemical waste at such an order of magnitude, is an extremely arduous task. In fact, just the chemical waste, and I don't want to describe the challenge, we all know the challenge. But just to give and example, in the 1940s there was a half a million tons of industrial chemicals made in this country. Now we are making 200 million tons each year. From a half a million to 200 million tons of industrial chemicals every year. Chemicals that the planet Earth cannot deal with, and so forth. And so we are terminating the Cenozoic Period, the last 65 million years. As the biologists tell us, nothing of this order of magnitude has happened. The extinctions that are taking place have not been equalled in 65 million years. And so we are at a terminal period, not simply a terminal period of a civilizational structure. But a terminal period in the whole geo-biological systems of the planet Earth. We are at a terminal period of truly devastating decline of the garden planet of the universe, so far as we know. Certainly the garden planet of the solar system and possibly the garden city of the universe. The garden city of 15 billion years in the story of the universe. We are guardians of a planet that is undergoing such severe assault. And we are called upon to do a great work, to renew the planet, to resist the further devastation of the planet. But to bring forth a new luxuriance on the planet Earth, to move from a terminal Cenozoic phase, which is a name for the past 65 million years of Earth history. And to move the planet Earth on into an Ecozoic Era, a period when humans would be present to the Earth in a mutually enhancing way. And that is our great work, it's a great work to which we are called. It's a great work beyond that of any society of any age that has been known on the planet. And that is the call that we have been dedicated to over these years. And when I say that good companions have come together, what I have in mind is the fact that here in this area, here at the research center in Riverdale. Here, where the American Society has been meeting for these last many years. Here is where this has been identified perhaps with a clarity that few other places could equal anywhere on the planet. We have identified the issue and we have identified also the conditions under which this this devastation can be stopped and which the renewal can take place. And this depends on something very, very simple. What is the cause of the difficulty in the first place? The cause of the difficulty in the first place has to do with the discontinuity between the human and the non-human. And the assumption of the human that they have rights to exploit the non-human. It's that simple, it's about a problem of continuity and discontinuity. We have rejected the continuity and the four big establishments that control human life. We have rejected the political establishment, the economic establishment. The university establishment or the intellectual establishment, and the political establishment. The political, the economic, the religious, the intellectual, four. The university, the church, the state, and the corporation. All four of these are functioning on the basis of the discontinuity between the human and the non-human. And the exploitation of the non-human by the human.
