“Now, in our modern scientific age, in a manner never known before, we have created our own sacred story, the epic of evolution, telling us, from empirical observation and critical analysis, how the universe came to be, the sequence of its transformations down through some billions of years, how our solar system came into being, then how the Earth took shape and brought us into existence.. This is our sacred story…
We will recover our sense of wonder and our sense of the sacred only if we appreciate the universe beyond ourselves as a revelatory experience of that numinous presence whence all things come into being. Indeed, the universe is the primary sacred reality. We become sacred by our participation in this more sublime dimension of the world about us…
The human venture depends absolutely on this quality of awe and reverence and joy in the Earth and all that lives and grows upon the Earth.. In the end the universe can only be explained in terms of celebration. It is all an exuberant expression of existence itself.. A way is opening for each person to receive the total spiritual heritage of the human community as well as the total spiritual heritage of the universe. Within this context the religious antagonisms of the past can be overcome, the particular traditions can be vitalized, and the feeling of presence to a sacred universe can appear once more to dynamize and sustain human affairs.
We must feel that we are supported by that same power that brought the Earth into being, that power that spun the galaxies into space, that tilt the sun and brought the moon into its orbit.”
Thomas Berry
King Edward Street Chapel 