The Natural World as Religious Educator: A Mediated Address by the Natural World

Our sacred scriptures tell us that all Creation groans in eager anticipation of God's grace. For those who are attentive to the voice of Creation, groaning in anticipation of deliverance is but one of the natural world's many modes of expression and communication. Creation sings, celebrates, instructs, and bears witness to the wisdom that orders all things. Indeed as Meister Eckhart reminds us, everything in the universe is a word of God and about God. What would be revealed to us if we listened carefully to ALL of the voices? This essay invites the human community to hear what some of the members of the larger life community seem to be communicating to us as these voices are discerned by contemporary humans, especially attentive to their presence and message. Notes 1Thomas Berry often describes the universe as a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. 2The approach is indebted to Joanna Macy's experiential methodology, as presented in "A Council of All Beings" (1988). 3Thomas Berry crafts this metaphor, drawn from the natural world, as a referent for the divine love and presence. 4Quoted from a poem by Thomas Berry entitled, "Morningside Cathedral," Earthlight 24:9, p. 204.