Thursday, September 25, 2008

EARTH AS SACRED COMMUNITY

John Shuck's Shuck & Jive offers a comprehensive review of an important book: Thomas Berry's Evening Thoughts: Earth As Sacred Community. Excerpt: "Berry says we need a realistic evaluation of the vision of the industrial world and an alternative vision. We cannot sustain this way of life. But we cannot seem to give it up."

5 comments:

David said...

The problem is not that we cannot change our current mode of industry, but that we refuse to do so. The collective-we remains in denial about environmental problems and poverty. Even many who claim to want to do something about these problems fail to achieve or even pursue results; grumbling about how an election should turn out or wishing for wind power accomplishes little as compared to educating family, friends, and neighbors about problems and organizing them to get their hands dirty with solutions.
Beyond this, concerned people need to live the solutions themselves. We need to conserve water and energy at home, drive less, walk more, and eat more sustainably. No one is going to be convinced that resource-conservative life styles are feasible and desirable if there are no models.

Abundancetrek said...

Thanks for a thoughtful, provocative and challenging comment.

John

David said...

John,
Apologies if I've bordered on being a fire-brand here. I want to get people focused on being the solution.
I've been looking for some good resources on green ministry lately, but I'm finding it tough to find any books with particularly positive reviews. Obviously, some of this is owing to environmental groups' proclivity to nit-pick each other, and some of this negativity is the result of some Christians' unwillingness to accept environmental issues as part of our responsibility. If you can recommend any books, articles, sermons, &c, I'd be grateful.

Abundancetrek said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Abundancetrek said...

Are you familiar with PRESBYTERIANS FOR RESTORING CREATION? The Presbyterians and the Lutherans have some good policies and good resources. Beyond Christianity, I like CELESTINE VISION. You can find the links in several of my recent posts on the Environment. Go to: abundancetrekblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Environment

A few books that come to mind quickly are: LIFE ABUNDANT by Sallie McFague, QUANTUM THEOLOGY by Diarmuid O'Murchu and WRESTLING UNTIL THE DAWN by John Preston.