"Even with all our technological accomplishments and urban sophistication, we consider ourselves blessed, healed in some manner, forgiven, and for a moment transported into some other world, when we catch a passing glimpse of an animal in the wild: a deer in some woodland, a fox crossing a field, a butterfly in its dancing flight southward to its wintering region, a hawk soaring in the distant sky, a hummingbird come into our garden, fireflies signaling to each other in the evening. So we might describe the thousandfold moments when we experience our meetings with the animals in their unrestrained and undomesticated status. Such incidents as these remind us that the universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not of objects to be exploited."
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Philosophers from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesCatholics from the United StatesTheologians from North Carolina
Original Language: English
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Chapter 3, pp. 37-38
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Berry
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Thomas Berry
(November 9, 1914 – June 1, 2009) was a Catholic priest of the order, cultural historian and ecotheologian (although cosmologist and geologian – or “Earth scholar” – were his preferred descriptors). Among advocates of "ecospirituality" and the "New Story," he is famous for proposing the idea that a deep understanding of the history and functioning of the evolving universe is a necessary inspiration and guide for our own effective functioning as individuals and as a species. He is considered a le
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