Homecoming

Thomas Berry is an author and Elder who has inspired me deeply. I used his book The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (1999) in senior level Environmental Studies classes that I taught from 1999 until the year I retired in 2005 from the University of North Dakota.

My small cadres of students and I were deeply concerned about the world around us and the environmental destruction which seemed to be escalating on so many fronts. Talking about such things was important to us, but even more essential, we were committed to an environmental walk. Over the precious months we shared, they too were moved by Thomas Berry's simple, rich, profound and poetic words.

A quote gave me impetus for a 180 degree turn in thinking. As that shift had already begun in me, Thomas Berry's words gave me that little nudge which precipated a change. That simple shift in view was like a homecoming for me, something I had sought and known on some deep level for a very long time. Here it is: Nature is not only more complex than we think. It is more complex than we can think.

I shared this quote with a group of senior professors at the University while we were on our way to a retreat in 1998. We had all just experienced a devastating flood in 1997 in the Grand Forks/East Grand Forks area where 60,000 people were evacuated. Our lives individually, as families and as communities were reeling during the months and years that followed. When I shared this quote, a Distinguished Professor said she found the statement depressing. I said I did not. Rather I feel that this knowing places me as a Human in a position of awe, humility, even relief toward something far grander than I can completely know. Rather than attempting to control this force or to live in artificial separation from it, I must learn to live with it and to respect it in every step of my walk on this Earth.

As a Human, I am very small in the scheme of things. Nature, that Great Giver and Nurturer of Life, gives me infinite lessons along my path. I must learn to respect and use those lessons with all the grace I can muster. I can accept there are things I cannot know, perhaps do not need to know. I am deeply grateful for the radiant beauty in these many known and unknown wondrous things.