We have learned the story of the Universe from many teachers beginning very early in life and this our primary source of intelligibility and value. Such a story is vastly important. It communicates the most sacred of mysteries …. and not only interprets the past, it also guides and inspires our actions in the present and the shaping of the future. Through ones relationship with the world and universe, this story of how the Universe came to be in the beginning and how it came to be as it is now, does a person come to appreciate the meaning of life. This meaning comes to have an effect on the psychic energy needed to deal effectively with those crisis moments that occur in the life of the individual and in the life of the society.
But how accurate is the story that we have been told in portraying the reality of that universe. We perceive the story in a way that promotes an abstract notion of subject-object relationship with the universe and all else within it. The conventional image of the universe has been developed and imparted through our language and the related story has its imprint everywhere. That is why it is so important to know the true story. If you do not know the story, in a sense you do not know yourself; you do not know anything.
Ive included a tract from Thomas Berry`s book “The Sacred Universe” – Gord
It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we are in between stories. The Old Story—the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it—sustained us for a long time. It shaped our emotional attitudes, provided us with life purpose, energized action, consecrated suffering, integrated knowledge, guided education. We awoke in the morning and knew where we were. We could answer the questions of our children. We could identify crime, punish transgressors. Everything was taken care of because the story was there. But now it is no longer functioning properly, and we have not yet learned the New Story. –Thomas Berry
We can know the story of the Universe more directly in a first hand way that is quite different from what we have known before, through the trees, through the winds and through the earth, literally, not just imaginatively. – Gord
