Befriending the Earth
A series of thirteen videos that explore environmental theology.
Catalog #: VEM 009 Production: VHS. Thirteen tapes, 30 min. each.
Format: Lecture/Presentation Audience: Adults
VEM 009-1: "Healing Theology." Thomas Berry, C.P., and Thomas Clarke, S.J., dialog about the failure of Christian theology to respond to modern life, including the environmental crisis.
VEM 009-2: "Science and the Sacred." Thomas Berry, C.P., and Thomas Clarke, S.J., discuss the evolving relationship between science and Christianity
VEM 009-3: "Knowing God." Since Biblical times, religion has understood the universe as having a beginning, and as going through stages of life, each one a preparation for the next. Science has now gone further with the concept of developmental time. This is the way God works, says Thomas Berry, and until religion gets back on track, our understanding of God won't match our perception of reality.
VEM 009-4: "Falling in Love with the Universe." Berry speaks of the law and force of the universe as love, a power that holds all things together in a community of life. Love is the inner spirit of reality, revealed in the discoveries of science. When religion and science connect, religion can provide poetry for the experience that science describes.
VEM 009-5: "Sacred World." Scripture presents God as separate from nature, and nature as dangerous to humans. This exaggerated notion of transcendence is a cause for our neglect of the planet. If we believe that God is not here, that the world is not sacred, then there is no real worth to our planet. We need to look at our relationship with the Earth and take responsibility within the world community.
VEM 009-6: "Tragedy is Not Our Business." The Western world is obsessed with tragedy and despair. We are not supposed to enjoy life or God, we feel we are inadequate, and we are told that the end will come to nothing. Unless we allow the sacred to enter our world again, unless we see ourselves as participants in creation, we will remain unmotivated, depressed, and stuck in this tragic view of the world.
VEM 009-7: "If Jesus Is Who He says He is He'll Show Up Somewhere." Why has Christianity not guided us out of our ecological crisis, but in fact has initiated and dominated in our neglect of the planet? We need to remember who Jesus was and follow his lead: a person marginal to society, who empowered people and held an ideal of human behavior to imitate. We can find him today, for he shows himself in the most unfashionable and unexpected of places.
VEM 009-8: "Social Justice, Earth Justice." The needs of the earth are pressing, but our faith tells us to put the needs of the poor first. However, attempts to help the poor will end in failure if a global view is not taken into account and the two aren't integrated. Key factors such as overpopulation and exploiting mines, forests, and oceans in the name of people's livelihoods must be balanced before our whole world system collapses.
VEM 009-9: "All Creation Groaning." Creation theology, which focuses on the goodness of the earth, and redemption theology, which focuses on sin, need to be integrated. We are partners in God's creation, but we need to be continually aware and watchful of our infinite capacity for evil and sin. And what more evidence of this is needed than our destruction of the natural world?
VEM 009-10: "Terror and Attraction." Our world is in ecological chaos, and we know how to stop it, yet we don't. This is because we are addicts. We hold to the illusion that we are in control, and can buy a quick fix out of our problems. We have to hit bottom. And when we do, we need to catch a vision, something to live for, a dream beyond our imagination. Religion can provide imagination for this dream.
VEM 009-11: "For Our Children a Shameful Legacy." When we consider our willful abuse of the planet, and the legacy of destruction we are handing on to the coming generations, we must ask: How can our future generations forgive us? We need to address this shame, the guilt we feel when we consider the ecological destruction we have caused, and are still willfully causing. We need to take steps to heal it.
VEM 009-12: "A Song for Our Time." Religion can lead people in an exodus out of our ecological disaster and into a new world community. This journey requires a poetry and a poet equal to the task. Until now, songs and literature about nature and the Earth have tended to romanticize them. We need a poetry that addresses the real story of humanity and the whole Earth. This is the poetry that religion can provide.
VEM 009-13: "Sacrifice and Grace." We are called to achieve something new on behalf of the earth community, and like all moments of transformation and growth, this transformation will require great sacrifice. This is a new period, and religion has not grasped the importance of the moment and its vital role in it. Religion cannot play its role in the ecological movement, the healing of the earth, without changing.
