National
Water Center, Eureka Springs,
Arkansas
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Pages 48 & 49 What must we be about, in order to be about finishing the work of James Fant Berry? When Moses led the Hebrew people out of Egypt and eventually into the promised land of Israel, before the people entered the promised land they wandered around for forty years. Moses, himself, never entered the promised land. He went up on a mountain and saw it, but he never entered the promised land. So James Fant Berry never entered the promised land of the Ecozoic Era. He went up on a mountain and saw it. He taught us about it. He gave guidelines and principles and visions to realize it. But his time was up before he himself could enter this land. He left us, and one day his brother Thomas Berry will leave us, realizing that bringing about the Ecozoic Era is up to those who would live after him, in other words us. And if we are to finish his work we must be about fulfilling his grand vision--"Our hope lies in the prospect that we will find our way into the Ecozoic Era quickly." If this task is ours, then what are we, guided by Jim, to do as our part in bringing into being this Ecozoic Era? Here are some things that have occurred to me as I re-read Jim's work. 1. Keep Alive the Legacy of Jim Berry - First, let's keep alive the legacy of Jim Berry. This struggle to bring into being the Ecozoic Era will be hard. We need heroes to guide us, and here is one giant of a man to keep us and strengthen us on the way. We need to keep the Center for Reflection on the Second Law going under the guidance of his grand daughter, Acasia Berry. We need to see that, through this Center, his circulars are published as a book, and give it wide distribution. After reading through the circulars, I feel they need to be edited very little and all, or almost all of them need to be published. Even the announcements at the end of the circulars stating who he was meeting with from time to time have meaning. 2. Wake Up! Speak for the Earth. Can we be autistic anymore, if we have been touched by this wonderful man. Can we anymore caught in withdrawal fantasies and illusion, unable to perceive our environment realistically? Will we continue to have extreme resistance to change of any kind as it affects our basic patterns of life? This is a man, Jim Berry, who appeared before meetings of governmental and civic bodies in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, and when recognized to speak he would say, "I am Jim Berry, and I speak for the Earth." If we are to finish Jim's work, we must also speak for the Earth. 3. Find Meaningful Work - Also, if we are to finish Jim's work, we must find in our lives meaningful work. This is something will find very challenging because we are all sustained in being by the very system that is, in Jim's words, "violating the integrity of creation." Yet, nothing I can imagine would please Jim more than that we could one day report to him, in our meditative counsel with him, that we have found and are about meaningful work that involves us in a meaningful and coherent manner with in the functioning of the Earth. 4. Live Fully, Listen, See, Touch, Feel, Smell and Taste the Earth. Jim has invited us to a feast of being, one where we are fully in touch with our authentic selves: The human psyche demands beauty and grace, demands complexity, demands daring, demands narrow balances and margins, demands austerity, esteems frugality and sacrifice, demands leanness, demands virtue, demands fun and laughter, understands sorrow, abhors violence, shuns meanness; requires love in huge amounts, needs generosity. Will we open ourselves to such a feast of life? 5. Live the New Paradigm, Be the Ecozoic Era. Jim has spoken to us of a new paradigm: The new paradigm sees Earth as sacred being, the maternal principle, alive with a spirit of its own out of which we are born and whence we derive all that we are and all that we have; recognizes that we are Earthlings, that Earth is our origin, our support, our nourishment, our guide, our spirituality itself; says that if there is no spirituality in the Earth there is no spirituality in us; that we are a dimension of the Earth The new paradigm is a lot more than this, but underneath, it is the new consciousness of self and unity with the whole, of integration along with differentiation, of belonging, of being "imbedded in nature." Can this be our paradigm? Can we live now as harbingers of the Ecozoic Era, of a vision of the future the promise of which yet to be, but now may be realized, a little bit, in us? We must do so, if we are to finish Jim's work. Jim's Call to Us We have had a giant walk among us, my friends. Let us never forget this great and gentle man. Jim calls out to us, "FINISH MY WORK!" "FINISH
MY WORK!" Among the many “jobs” for the Earth that Jim Berry did, one was serving as a member of the Board of Directors for the North American Coalition on Christianity and Ecology (NACCE). To honor the memory of Jim, the Board of Directors for NACCE arranged to have a tree planted at Camp Good Hope as a tribute to a friend, colleague and inspiration.
Acasia, Thomas and Ann admire this living tribute to Jim. Naming Our Home
Another key element of the bioregional movement that speaks to
me with ever greater clarity is the centrality of water to its members. Thus, at the Gulf of
Maine gathering, people spoke not of being from Ohio, but from the Ohio River Valley Watershed; not of being from San Francisco, but from the San Francisco
Bay Bioregion; not of being from Connecticut, but from the
Long Island Sound Watershed. Using one’s watershed as a critical component in identifying one’s
home was something new for me. And over the years it has taken on added significance: both as I travel to other bioregions and in regard to Ridgefield,
CT, the place where I have now lived for over thirty years. I have learned that defining one’s watershed is not always an easy matter but that one can learn
much in the process. Only recently have I learned that eight rivers originate in What is the name of the bioregion that you call home? Eleanor Rae, Ph. D., is a theologian by profession and a lover of the Earth by passion. She is past president of the North American Coalition on Christianity and Ecology (NACCE) and founder / president of the Center for Women, the Earth, the Divine (C:WED). She is currently working on a book on women, the Earth, and the world’s religions. Recently C:WED has been officially recognized by the UN as an NGO.
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My involvement with the bioregional movement has only been
sporadic but it
has been very meaningful. I first heard about bioregionalism from one of its
founders, David Haenke, with whom I served on the board of the North American
Conference on Christianity and Ecology (NACCE). It struck me that here was a
movement that offered a vision of a viable future. So, when the North American Bioregional Congress lV met in the Gulf of Maine in 1990, I decided to
attend.
Writing about the Congress years later for my book Women, the Earth, the Divine,
I noted the following: “...several strong impressions remain with me. These
include
a model where play was truly as important as work; the presence of those who
spoke for other life forms such as spiders; the conviction that by utilizing the
facilitation skills of someone like a Carolyn Estes, a large diverse group could
effectively make decision by consensus; the change of name from North American
Bioregional Congress to Turtle Island Bioregional Congress to better reflect our
native roots; the certainty that this was a movement begun and led by the Spirit”.
(p. 55). These are issues that I would held to still to critical if the Earth is
to be
restored to its former beauty.