GREENSBORO – Whatever preserves and enhances this meadow in the natural cycles of its transformation is good, whatever opposes this meadow is not good. My life orientation is that simple. It is also that pervasive.
My understanding of the Great Work began when I was quite young. At the time I was about eleven years old. My family was moving from a more settled part of a small southern town, out to the edge of town where a new house was being built.
The house, not yet finished, was situated on a slight incline. Down below was a small creek and there across the creek was a meadow.
It was an early afternoon in late May when I first wandered down the incline, crossed the creek and looked over the scene.
The field was covered with white lilies rising above the thick grass.
A magic moment, this experience gave to my life something that seems to explain my thinking at a more profound level than almost any other experience I can remember.
It was not only the lilies. It was the singing of the crickets and the woodlands in the distance and the clouds in a clear sky. This early experience, it seems, has become normative for me throughout the entire range of my thinking.
Although the meadow has none of the immensity or grandeur of other places, still in this little meadow the magnificence of life as celebration is manifested in a manner as profound and impressive as any other place I have known in these past many years.
From “The Meadow Across the Creek” in The Great Work by Thomas Berry. Shared with permission of the Sisters of the Earth Community at the Green Mountain Monastery/Thomas Berry Sanctuary, Greensboro.
They said, “Thomas Berry, at his request, was buried on our land in a meadow on June 8, 2009 and we are deeply honored to be the custodians of his final resting place.
“For over 10 years we have cared for this sacred site, welcoming people from around the world who come to pay their deep respects to Thomas.
“We chose the meadow as Thomas’s final resting place because it was the deep archetype of the Meadow, (representing the entire Earth community) that Thomas carried with him throughout his life.
“Now, in a gesture of gratitude, the meadow has taken Thomas back to itself in a full embrace.”
Thomas Berry (1914-2009) was a cultural historian who sought a broader perspective on humanity’s relationship to the earth in order to respond to the ecological and social challenges of our times.
