​Most of our ancestors lived with fewer comforts, less conveniences, and more physical difficulties than we know. Yet there is a general sense that life today is more challenging and difficult than previous generations. Psychological pressures have intensified and spiritual supports have weakened. The stability which comes from noble convictions has crumbled. There is not a place the soul can easily find rest. The disintegration is experienced on so many levels – political, social, ethical, agricultural, educational, religious and economic. We are living in a time of crisis.
Thomas Berry, a Passionist priest and self-described ecologian, suggests we are suffering a crisis in cosmology. He believes our culture desperately needs a new cosmology if we are to survive. It would be simplistic, according to Berry, to conclude that the deterioration of the Earth is due to selfishness or lack of goodwill. We face ecological uncertainty and psychic confusion not because human beings are inherently greedy or evil. Rather, our crisis has been precipitated because humans are living out of inaccurate perceptions of reality.  (Photo iStock)

Anthony Mullen, the founding Executive Director of the Thomas Berry Place was featured in a recent podcast, A Spiritual Startup: The Thomas Berry Place as a New Form of Ministry and Mission from the Passionist Earth and Spirit Center in Louisville. 
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The Thomas Berry Place is a non-profit center for spirituality, community empowerment, and ecological stewardship. The project of St. Paul of the Cross province is located in the re-visioned and renamed Bishop Malloy Passionist monastery in Jamaica, New York. In this conversation with Earth and Spirit Center Director, Kyle Kramer, Anthony reflects on the vision and values that guide the work of what he describes as a spiritual startup.

Anthony talks about Thomas Berry, who is sometimes referred to as an "ecologian," and how his life and work is incorporated into the development of the Thomas Berry Place. Berry believed "that the Wisdom of the Cross and Wisdom of the Universe are actually a single vision.  His views were deeply holistic and he sought to rethink and right-size our relationship with the divine and his story of the universe was without duality."  

Mullen describes the Thomas Berry Place as a manifestation of what Berry wrote about.  His “Great Work” was to describe a new wisdom tradition drawing on the “Four Wisdoms” he hoped would guide humanity in the anthropocene: “the wisdom of indigenous peoples, the wisdom of women, the wisdom of the classical traditions, and the wisdom of science” (GW 176)

Listen to Anthony Mullen, The Thomas Berry Place as a New Form of Ministry and Mission  

Explore and listen  to all the Earth and Spirit Center podcasts here. 

Image by Gustavo Ferreira Gustavo from Pixabay