Redtree Times

Twilight Time–At West End Gallery

If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur, then the emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and spiritual life of the human is diminished or extinguished. Without the soaring birds, the great forests, the sounds and coloration of the insects, the free-flowing streams, the flowering fields, the sight of clouds by day and the stars at night, we become impoverished in all that makes us human.

–Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (1999)

I came across the passage above this morning from Thomas Berry (1914-2009), someone who I have to confess I didn’t know anything about before this morning. But I found much in reading about him that piqued my interest.  Berry was a Catholic priest, cultural historian, and scholar of world religions who, later in life, studied the confluence of geology, ecology, and evolution. I came across one article that described him as an ecologian, or ecotheologian though it is said he preferred geologian.

There was one paragraph from his Wikipedia article that really struck a chord:

Berry believed that humanity, after generations spent in despoiling the planet, is poised to embrace a new role as a vital part of a larger, interdependent Earth community, consisting of a “communion of subjects not a collection of objects”. He felt that we were at a critical turning point, moving out of the Cenozoic era and entering into a new evolutionary phase, which would either be an Ecozoic Era, characterized by mutually-enhancing human-Earth relations, or a Techozoic Era, where we dominate and exploit the planet via our technological mastery.

With the astounding speed which AI ( along with the huge ecological cost that it requires) is infiltrating every aspect of our lives along with the ability of Big Tech to surveil us in most every way, it seems that Berry was prescient in his predictions when he first formulated this theory in the late 70’s and 80’s about the possibility of our entrance into a Techozoic Era. With everything that is happening at such an accelerated rate, I fear that an Ecozoic Era is moving quickly out of the realm of possibility.

And in the passage at the top, Berry warns that a decision to further exploit the planet will create a harsher environment for all living things, potentially causing us to lose those many things in the natural world we take for granted. Bees. Birds. Clean water. And much more. Things, that if lost, diminish the quality of our existence. I

Anecdotally, I know that when the woods around the studio are filled with the sound of birds, I am a much happier human being. When I was working in my first studio further up in the woods, I loved to hear the buzz of the bees in spring and summer as they made their hives in the hollows of trees. That sound is gone now. Seeing more a handful of bees at a time now, let alone hearing them, is a rare thing these days.

But who knows? Maybe there will be a turnaround at some point, a rejection by the citizens of the Techno Masters and a return to a gentler relationship with the Earth.

A rebirth of sorts where we and all the other living beings so affected by our decisions rise from the ashes like the mythical Phoenix.

I will maintain that hope.

That leads us into this week’s Sunday Morning Musical selection. This song, Ascending Bird, is based on the Persian version of the Phoenix myth, of a bird who flies higher and higher toward the sun until it is engulfed in flames. It falls back to the Earth then rises from the ashes as a new creature.

Ascending Bird is a traditional Persian folk melody, played here by the Silk Road Ensemble which is a large and loosely knit group of musicians, including the great Yo-Yo Ma, who hail from along that fabled route and play many of the traditional instruments. The Silk Road was the network of ancient routes that traders used in linking the Eastern and Western worlds over the centuries, transporting both goods and ideas from China through the Middle East to the Mediterranean.