AWAKENING TO THE SACRED��A RETREAT WITH THOMAS BERRY

What do you see? What do you see when you look up at the sky at night? When you see the blazing stars against the midnight heavens? What do you see when the dawn breaks over the eastern horizon? What do you see? What do you feel standing on the levee in the evening as the mighty Mississippi rolls on its way to the Gulf? What are your thoughts in the fading days of summer as the birds depart on their south return, or when the leaves turn brown and are blown away? What are your thoughts when you look out over the ocean in a summer day? What do you see?��In the opening paragraph of The Human Phenomenon, Teilhard de Chardin tells us: “One can say that a whole of life lies in seeing ... That’s probably why the history of the living world can be reduced to the elaboration of ever more perfect eyes … See or perish.” This is the situation imposed on every element of the universe by the mysterious gift of existence. � Thomas Berry, “Universe as Sacred Community” lecture

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VIDEO CLIP FROM THE UNIVERSE AS SACRED COMMUNITY LECTURE

OVERARCHING REFLECTION QUESTIONS

What do you see, feel, and/or think as you look out over the world before you? Do you experience the sacred? How might awakening to the sacred impact your participation in the total Earth community?

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OPENING PRAYER

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[A] new sense of the universe needs to be understood. It needs to be understood as from the beginning having a spiritual dimension as well as a physical dimension, and that is the difficulty. The scientists have told us that the universe emerged into being in some mysterious way, but it is a simple mechanistic process that can be known by quantitative measurements and put into scientific formula. …. But the necessity is that we understand that the universe from the beginning had a spiritual dimension. It was, in a sense, it was a minimal mode of consciousness, but every being has an inner presentation of the great mystery of existence. Anything that exists reveals the Divine. Everything that exists has a certain Divine aspect.

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FROM THOMAS BERRY’S

THE EMERGENT UNIVERSE LECTURE

FROM THOMAS BERRY’S SPIRITUALITY OF ECOLOGY INTERVIEW

God is something more than a word, is something more than just an interior experience because you cannot even sustain a vital sense of who God or what God is except through creation. God didn’t create the universe to be destroyed. He didn’t create the universe to be ignored. He created the universe as a manifestation of his own grandeur and abundance and beauty and vitality and all of that, his power. It’s very absurd to drift off into interior devotion as the be-all of a Christian’s life. It’s like a person professing a devotion to the Divine while watching the world of the Divine be destroyed and … not even objecting.

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VIDEO CLIP FROM THE UNIVERSITY IN THE 21^ST CENTURY LECTURE

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REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. In what ways have modern scientific narratives influenced your sense of whether the universe is meaningful or merely mechanical, and where do you notice awe, reverence, or resistance arising when you encounter the living Earth through both science and direct experience?
2. When you contemplate the ordered creativity of living beings—the acorn becoming an oak, the flight of birds, the rhythms of oceans and stars—what do you intuit about the presence of a unifying or animating principle, and how might acknowledging this reshape your ethical, spiritual, or ecological commitments?
3. Can you think of an example when an experience in the natural world evoked a sense of inner spontaneity in you that led you to sing, dance, or create a poem or some other kind of art?

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VIDEO CLIP FROM THE COSMIC LITURGY LECTURE

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REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. Berry names three attributes of the sacred: wonder, beauty, and intimacy. Can you name something in your daily life with any or all of these attributes, particularly something you might not have previously viewed as sacred? How could this new understanding of the sacred lead you to view the world differently?
2. Reflect on the idea of the Earth saying to you, “Don’t use me in the sense of devastating the better things I have to give you. I have better things to give you. I have love, I have beauty, I have wonder.” What gifts have you received from the natural world? What comes to mind? In what ways might you be using the Earth?

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LECTIO REFLECTION: WHAT DOES THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT HAVE TO TEACH US?

Thomas Berry, taken from an interview with Kathleen O’Gorman

INVITATION TO REFLECT

What word, phrase, or idea resonated with you as you listened?

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OVERARCHING REFLECTION QUESTIONS

What do you see, feel, and/or think as you look out over the world before you? Do you experience the sacred? How might awakening to the sacred impact your participation in the total Earth community?

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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

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

All photographs by Carol Lenox

© 2025

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