Tom Berry became a Roman Catholic monk, he says, because ever since childhood he has been a brooder and family life would have been difficult for him. He has taught university in America and China and is author of several books on Zen Buddhism and on a new, emerging view of the cosmos that encompasses both astrophysics and a reverence for creation.

I became aware of Tom Berry six years ago when I interviewed nature photographer Jim Brandenburg (author of Brother Wolf and White Wolf). At the end of our interview, Jim handed me a book by Berry -- Dream of the Earth -- saying, "This book has influenced me probably more than any other." As described in “Reflections Of A Wild Artist,” the work of Thomas Berry has also had a profound impact on Heron Dance.

In Dream of the Earth, Berry explores the importance of a culture's story of creation:

For peoples, generally, their story of the universe and the human role in the universe is their primary source of intelligibility and value. Only through this story of how the universe came to be in the beginning and how it came to be as it is does a person come to appreciate the meaning of life or to derive 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. Such a story is the basis of ritual initiations throughout the world. It communicates the most sacred of mysteries... The deepest crises experienced by any society are those moments of change when the story becomes inadequate for meeting the survival demands of a present situation... Our story not only interprets the past, it also inspires and guides our shaping of the future...

            In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries another historical vision was introduced, by Francis Bacon, the vision of a better order in earthly affairs through scientific control over the functioning of the natural world, a vision that was first articulated as the doctrine of "progress" by Bernard Fontenelle in the following century. This vision found its fulfillment in the industrial age of the past two centuries. Whatever their differences, both liberal capitalism and Marxist socialism committed themselves totally to this vision of industrial progress which more than any other single cause has brought about the disintegration that is taking place throughout the entire planet. By a supreme irony this closing down of the basic life systems of the earth has resulted from a commitment to the betterment of the human condition, to "progress."

            ... The pathos in our own situation is that our secular society does not see the numinous quality or the deeper psychic powers associated with its own story, while the religious society rejects the story because it is presented only in its physical aspect. The remedy for this is to establish a deeper understanding of the spiritual dynamics of the universe as revealed through our own empirical insight into the mysteries of its functioning.

            In this late twentieth century that can now be done with a clarity never before available to us. Empirical inquiry into the universe reveals that from its beginning in the galactic system to its earthly expression in human consciousness the universe carries within itself a psychic-spiritual as well as a physical-material dimension. Other­wise human consciousness emerges out of nowhere. The human is seen as an addendum or an intrusion and thus finds no real place in the story of the universe. In reality the human activates the most profound dimension of the universe itself, its capacity to reflect on and celebrate itself in conscious self-awareness.
- Thomas Berry, Dream of the Earth (from the introduction and
page 131)

That concept of the human mind representing the way the universe reflects back on itself kept coming back to me and so I approached Tom Berry for an interview. We met at his apartment above a former horse stable on the outskirts of Greensboro, North Carolina. I rang the door bell. He appeared at the top of the stairs and shouted down, "Welcome friend." For a year or so, Tom has been a subscriber to Heron Dance. We sat in his living room. I sketched him while he talked, something I rarely do. Most people are too self-conscious to be sketched during an interview. Tom, however, retreated into his own internal world and not to notice me. He sat comfortably in a chair, wearing several layers of clothes on the cool October day we met. He amazed me with his knowledge of human cultural history. He also talked about the roots of human creativity.