Thomas Berry challenges us to rethink humanity’s story on Earth: we are not masters of a mechanical world but participants in a sacred community of life. Framing ecological collapse as a spiritual crisis, he invites us to embrace a new cosmology of meaning, belonging, and partnership with the planet, and to reclaim our role as the Earth’s “consciousness.”

Jane Blewett interviews Thomas Berry about Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s philosophy.

Noted cultural historian Thomas Berry provides nothing less than a new intellectual-ethical framework for the human community by positing planetary well-being as the measure of all human activity. Drawing on the wisdom of Western philosophy, Asian thought, and Native American traditions, as well as contemporary physics and evolutionary biology, Berry offers a new perspective that recasts our understanding of science, technology, politics, religion, ecology, and education. He shows us why it is important for us to respond to the Earth’s need for planetary renewal, and what we must do to break free of the “technological trance” that drives a misguided dream of progress. Only then, he suggests, can we foster mutually enhancing human-Earth relationships that can heal our traumatized global biosystem.

Cultural historian Thomas Berry issues a profound summons to reimagine humanity’s place within the living fabric of the Earth. He envisions a radical transformation—from a species that wounds its home to one that nurtures it—calling for the “resacralization of nature” and a renewal of our ecological consciousness. More than a philosophical reflection, Berry’s work is a moral and spiritual manifesto, demanding an overhaul of our ethics, politics, economics, and education. Only through this sweeping reorientation, he insists, can we move from exploitation toward communion, from survival toward a flourishing future shared with all life.

The Universe Story presents a narrative of cosmic evolution, from the Big Bang to the emergence of human consciousness. Fusing scientific discovery with spiritual insight, it offers a new, sacred story that redefines humanity’s place in the cosmos. This “New Story” replaces the outdated, mechanistic worldview that has led to ecological crisis, urging a shift toward ecological responsibility and a deeper connection to the living Earth.