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INSERT VIDEO CLIP 1

WHAT IS IT TO BE EDUCATED? MY DEFINITION OF “EDUCATED” IS VERY SIMPLE: TO KNOW THE STORY, AND THE HUMAN ROLE IN THE STORY, AND THE PERSONAL ROLE IN THE STORY, THE GREAT STORY.

I WAS ONCE IN CANADA AT GEORGIAN BAY. THE INDIANS THERE HAD INVITED ME, AND I HAD BEEN INVITED MANY TIMES TO PARTICIPATE IN INDIAN ASSEMBLIES. THIS TIME, I WAS, I THINK THESE WERE CHIPPEWA INDIANS, FOR THE MOST PART. THERE WERE SOME CREE THERE, AND SOME OF THE SIX-NATIONS PEOPLE. BUT, AND I HAD BEEN ASKED TO SPEAK; I WASN'T ENTIRELY CLEAR OF WHAT WAS EXPECTED OF ME. AND I, THE NIGHT BEFORE, I WAS OUT LOOKING AT THE REFLECTION OF THE MOON ON THE WATERS OF THE BAY.

AND THE NEXT DAY, WHEN I WENT INTO THE BIG TENT AND SPOKE, I SAID, I WASN'T SURE WHAT I SHOULD SAY, AND I ASKED THE MOON, "WHAT SHOULD I SAY?" AND THE MOON SAID, "TELL THEM THE STORY." AND THEN I ASKED THE WIND, "WHAT SHOULD I SAY?" AND THE WIND SAID, "TELL THEM THE STORY." AND BEFORE I CAME IN THE TENT, I ASKED THE CLOVER OF THE MEADOW, JUST OUTSIDE, "WHAT SHOULD I SAY?" AND THE CLOVER SAID, TELL THEM THE STORY. MY STORY, THE RIVER STORY, THE MOUNTAIN STORY, THE STORY OF THE SEA, THE STORY OF THE BIRDS. MY STORY, YOUR STORY, THEIR STORY, THE GREAT STORY." AND THEN I SAID TO THE GROUP THERE IN FRONT OF ME, I SAID, "THE DIFFICULTY OF MY GENERATION, OF THE EURO-AMERICANS THAT HAVE SETTLED THIS CONTENT, IS THAT THEY COULD NEVER HEAR, THEY COULD NEVER CONSULT, THEY COULD NEVER BE INTIMATE WITH THE WIND, AND THE MEADOW, AND THE GRASSES, AND THE TREES, AND THE BIRDS. AND THEY NEVER CAME TO KNOW THE GREAT STORY."

Thomas Berry, “The Emergent Universe” Lecture

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OVERARCHING REFLECTION QUESTIONS

How is the story of the universe also your own personal story? How might learning the story in its physical and spiritual dimensions help you to discover your own role in the unfolding of the universe?

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OPENING PRAYER

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FROM A THOMAS BERRY GREENVILLE INTERVIEW WITH KATHLEEN O’GORMAN

We understand things … primarily through story. That is why when you ask a religious leader something they don’t give you an answer. Frequently, they tell you a story. Ask Jesus a question and he tells you a story. The Bible is a great and complex story of events, and we live our lives within some kind of a narrative framework. Civilizations are founded on their stories of how things came to be in the beginning, how they come to be as they are, and the human role in the story. That is what the Bible is. The Jesus participation in the story is a very special way in which the Divine becomes present to us and to the entire human community. So this participation is within the context of a great narrative. So we need to know the narrative. The Bible gives us the Genesis narrative, and it gives us a narrative of the Exodus, and story of the prophets and so forth, the tensions that existed in the course of the history of the chosen people. At the back of it all is the great story, and the great story as we know it now, is different. It is the greatest single change in human consciousness since humans came into being. And that is what is difficult about our times, because for the first time we have a story of the universe as an emergent process. It is the same story, in a sense, but it is a story that is told as a sequence of emergent transformation episodes.

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We have a story now of how the universe comes to be through the emergence of energy forces, through the formation of particles from atomic processes, through the formation of galaxies, and all this, and how the planet earth comes into being through the process of the sun gathering particles in space by force of gravitation and forming this immense ball of fire that has 99 percent of the matter of the solar system.

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We know how all this happened now, but it has been difficult, and I think, an unnecessary difficulty for people to understand this doesn’t change the story. What it does is tell us more of how things came to be the way they are. In the Bible, we have the story of creation told very simply, but once that is told, that the light came and then the different processes of creation come through the six days, after that it has no more details. They didn’t know any more of the story. Now we know the story in much greater detail and so we see the universe in a much more elaborate way and in a much more meaningful way.

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AND TO BE ABLE TO ACCEPT THIS AS REVELATORY OF THE MODALITY OF THE DIVINE IN CREATION IS ENORMOUSLY IMPORTANT. BECAUSE IF WE REJECT THIS STORY SIMPLY BECAUSE THE SCIENTISTS WHO DISCOVERED THE STORY TELL US THAT IT IS MECHANISTIC OR THAT IT IS A RANDOM PROCESS OR IT DOESN’T HAVE ANY INHERENT MEANING, THEN WE LOSE ALL CONTACT WITH THE REALITY OF THE UNIVERSE AS IT IS UNDERSTOOD IN OUR TIMES.

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This tells us wonderful things, this new story of the universe. For one thing it tells us how intimate the human is with the universe. … Everything is integral with everything else. … Everything is present to everything else. So we can have this feeling of intimacy with the universe.

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To know that we are intimate with the universe and that this universe is Divine manifestation, and to know that it reaches a certain culmination in ourselves, is to give us a thrilling and exciting understanding of who we are, how important we are to the universe, and how important the universe is to us, and how the mysterious Divine reality that brought all of this into being is present to us in bringing us into being, but also in activating an awareness of itself, of its power, its beauty, its magnificence, and its intimacy.

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THIS IS ALL COMMUNICATED TO US IN AND THROUGH THE STARS IN THE HEAVENS, OUR EXPERIENCE OF NATURAL PHENOMENA, OUR EXPERIENCE OF ALL THE BEAUTIES OF THE UNIVERSE. IT IS ALL INTIMATELY A PART OF THE PROCESS WHEREBY WE COME INTO BEING. NOT ONLY COME INTO BEING, BUT BY WHICH OUR INNER LIFE IS ACTIVATED. WE COME INTO BEING PHYSICALLY, BUT ALSO INTELLECTUALLY, EMOTIONALLY, SENSITIVELY, AND SPIRITUALLY. IF WE LOSE OUR SENSE OF THE UNIVERSE AROUND US, WE LOSE OUR SPIRITUALITY, BECAUSE WE HAVE NO IMAGES IN OUR MIND EXCEPT THE IMAGES THAT ARE GIVEN TO US THROUGH THE UNIVERSE.

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VIDEO CLIP 2 FROM THE CHURCH IN THE 21^ST CENTURY

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REFLECTION QUESTIONS

If the story of the universe is your personal story, how does understanding yourself as an expression of a 12–15 billion–year emergent process reshape your sense of identity, purpose, and belonging?
In what ways have you experienced creative disequilibrium and/or creative turbulence in your life? How have you experienced sacrificial moments? Have these moments helped you to grow? How do you relate to instability, tension, or disruption in your life—as threat, invitation, or source of creativity?
What changes when the Genesis story is held alongside the universe story rather than in opposition to it? Where do you experience continuity, tension, or deepened meaning between these ways of knowing?
Differentiation, interiority, and communion are described as the universe’s three basic tendencies. Which of these do you feel most strongly expressed in your life right now, and which might be calling for deeper attention or healing?

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LECTIO ACTIVITY

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INVITATION TO REFLECT

We are going to hear sections from three different lectures or interviews given by Thomas Berry where he elaborates on particular understandings we have gained from our knowledge of the universe story. He speaks of the importance of the human mode of being to the whole universe, the necessity of beauty to the functioning of the human, and how the story of a single, unified process leads to a deeper understanding of the one God whence all things come.

After each selection, pause for a few moments of silence. What word, phrase, or idea resonated with you as you listened?

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THOMAS BERRY, INTERVIEW WITH �GERALD M. FAGIN, S.J.

Now, what is also interesting as regards Christology is that the scientists now see where the whole process is aimed at the human mode of being. And it's now called the cosmological anthropological concept. That is, that the whole universe looks forward to the formation of the human. Now, one scientist says, one of the most important of our scientists, I think it's Freeman Dyson, the more he studies the structure of the universe, the more clear it is to him that the universe must have known that we were coming and that everything that happened in the whole course of the universe was necessary in order to produce intelligence whereby the universe would know itself. Now, I define the human as that being in whom the universe reflects on and celebrates itself and its numinous origin and a special mode of conscious self-awareness. It's not that we know the universe; the universe knows itself. And this is why we exist, it's in order to enable the universe in this emergent process to complete itself by a reflective type of awareness of itself and rejoicing, so to speak.

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And the earth was so beautiful when we came into being, amazingly beautiful. I sometimes think that humans could not come into being except in a beautiful universe with all the wonders of�the birds, the animals, the vegetation, and so forth. Now, this capacity for a, to appreciate�this, I think we needed something that would inspire us, that would reveal, only such a realm would reveal the Divine, so to speak, only such a world could fulfill the demands of the human soul, of the human imagination. Only such a world could sustain what we would consider the sorrows of life, or the pains of life. Whereas all living beings go through a certain pain, humans go through pain with a conscious process that gives us a...manifolds greater sensibility to the suffering. And to sustain that, we need a beautiful universe.

THOMAS BERRY, EDUCATION IN THE 21^ST CENTURY LECTURE

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NOW, HERE'S ONE OF THE IMPORTANT THINGS ABOUT OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE UNIVERSE AT THE PRESENT TIME THAT IS SUCH OF GREAT IMPORTANCE. AND IT IS THAT WE ARE COUSINS TO EVERY REALITY THAT EXISTS. WE'RE COUSINS TO EVERY FORM OF LIFE BECAUSE THE UNIVERSE BEGINS IN A VERY SIMPLE PHASE AND THEN ARTICULATES ITSELF THROUGH A LONG SEQUENCE OF TRANSFORMATION EPISODES. BUT IT'S ONE PROCESS FROM THE BEGINNING. WE'RE GENETICALLY RELATED TO ALL THE OTHER ANIMAL SPECIES. WE'RE GENETICALLY RELATED TO THE STARS IN THE SENSE THAT THE STARS AND OURSELVES EMERGE OUT OF A SINGLE, UNIFIED PROCESS. AND IT'S ONE OF THE POINTS THAT IS ENORMOUSLY IMPORTANT, EVEN SPIRITUALLY, IS BECAUSE THIS TRACING THE UNIVERSE BACK TO ITS BEGINNING REVEALS TO US THE FACT THAT THE MYSTERIOUS POWER OF BEYOND THAT THE DIVINE ORIGIN WHENCE ALL THINGS COME IN THE BEGINNING, THAT THAT IS ONE. IT'S A SINGLE VIEW OF REALITY BECAUSE IF THE UNIVERSE WERE NOT IN INTERIORLY RELATED, EACH PART INTIMATELY PRESENT WITH EVERY OTHER PART, THEN A PERSON MIGHT ARGUE THAT THERE ARE MORE THAN ONE DEITY OR MORE THAN ONE ULTIMATE CAUSE BEYOND THE UNIVERSE ITSELF. BUT THE UNIVERSE ITSELF REVEALS THAT WHATEVER ORIGIN IT IS, IT IS IN A SINGLE REALITY, THAT THE DIVINE IS ULTIMATELY ONE. IT REVEALS ALSO THAT THE WORLD ABOUT US IS A SINGLE WORLD.

THOMAS BERRY, EMERGENT UNIVERSE LECTURE

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REFLECTION QUESTIONS

What does it mean for you to be that being “in whom the universe reflects on and celebrates itself”?
In what ways has beauty inspired you?
We are described as cousins to every reality that exists, genetically and cosmically related to all beings. How might living from this sense of kinship change the way you relate to the Earth, other species, or people who feel “other” to you?
The unity of the universe points to a single divine origin intimately present in all things. How does this vision of oneness shape your understanding of the Divine, and where do you encounter this unity in your daily life?

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OVERARCHING REFLECTION QUESTIONS

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CLOSING PRAYER

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THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING

A Retreat with Thomas Berry

The Thomas Berry Project

Loyola Institute for Ministry

Loyola University New Orleans

Developed by Carol Lenox, Marion Danforth, Jennifer Shimek, Tom Ryan, and Tracey Lamont

All photographs by Carol Lenox