Eucharist Celebration and Burial of Thomas Berry,cp at Green Mountain Monastery- Greensboro , Vermont

June 8, 2009



— Angela Manno, June 9, 2009 with some revisionsby Gail Worcelo,sgm





The weather at Green Mountain Monastery on June 8th, the day of the funeral mass and burial of our dear friend and teacher Thomas Berry was impeccable. With bright blues skies and a few puffy white clouds, the mist from the early Vermont morning had burned off completely by the time people had assembled in front of and to the side of the monastery entrance, greeting each other in wait for the toll of the bell to signal the commencement of the service.



Upon hearing the monastery bell, all fell silent and began to follow one by one as Sr. Gail Worcelo led us in a silent walking meditation down a balsam lined path circumambulating the steel statue of St Francis and the Birds donated by Frederick Franck in 2006 to Green Mountain Monastery in honor of Thomas Berry. After circling the lower meadow and mid-sized evergreens, people gathered in front of the statue. The dedication by Franck was read aloud:



"I dedicate this steel icon to the deathless spirit incarnate in one of the most precious of my contemporaries.



Like that of St Francis of Assisi , Thomas Berry's life testifies to the indestructible human spirit, the surviving triumph of human wisdom over all the follies and cruelties of our generation."



Then we left single file once more and filed into the monastery for the Eucharist Celebration and Burial Mass, whose celebrants were listed as: " The Entire Earth Community."



In the center of the room, surrounded by the people that loved him, lay Thomas's casket with a single lit candle placed upon it.



Musician Paul Winter pierced the silence with his soprano sax in a prelude that was part lament, leading participants into a state of presence and contemplation.



Then Sister Gail (co-founder with Fr. Thomas Berry and Bernadette Bostwick of Green Mt Monastery)came to the podium and welcomed us. She reminded us about how , "At the age of eleven, Thomas had a life altering experience when he came upon a Meadow filled with white lilies in his home town of Greensboro , NC." This experience Sr Gail said, " was not so much an epiphany but 'a geo-phany' , the sudden revelation of the numinous presence of the Divine penetrating the Earth."

"Thomas dedicated his entire life to this Geo- tific vision. Whatever preserved the meadow was good, whatever opposed the meadow was not." " The Meadow," Sr Gail said, "was an archetype for the entire Earth Community."

How fitting it is that he would be laid to rest, she told us, "in our Meadow, which today takes Thomas back to itself in a full embrace."



When Gail's welcome was at an end, the response of "O Thou who Clothes the Lilies" was sung by Sr Kathleen Deignan. During this song, Sisters Bernadette and Gail laid upon the coffin three objects sweet with symbolic and ordinary significance: a vase of white lilies, Thomas's well-worn navy blue jacket and his black loafers. I had a sense of both history and the future, where his items of dress, so familiar to those who knew Thomas, would become treasures in the years and centuries to follow.



We were then graced with the recorded voice of Thomas reflecting in anticipation of when we would all be gathered together for this moment:



"It is a touching moment, a poignant moment a person might say. Together with you all here, in a sense for the last time that we would meet in such a large assembly with those of us who have been associated with each other over all these many years.





I came across something not long ago, it was a story of an Indian whose name was Rubin Snake, a rather large person, he did so much for his tribe. I'm not sure exactly what tribe?



He was talking with someone and they were venturing on something of monumental importance. The other person was reflecting on it and said, ‘dear, this is something awesome to try to do,. There's you and me, and we are nothing. and we must be very foolish to even think of such a thing.



The old Indian, in a gruff voice said, ‘Yea, but we'll find good companions along the way.



And so in my own life venture, I've found good companions along the way. And from moment to moment the number has gathered until it seems almost limitless the number of good companions."



Moments of silence followed in which we marveled at the truth and goodness of Thomas's comforting words to us.



The mass proceeded with a call to prayer by Fr Steve Dunn, cp and three verses of a Song of Blessing by Coleen Fulmer that began:



"The whole of the Earth will be blessed by you; in God you have made your home. The stars will dance as they call out your name; your heart always laughing with joy, your heart always laughing with joy."



The Gloria was from the Mass in the Ecozoic by Jan Novotka and the first reading was done by Kaiulani Lee from the Gospel of Thomas:



Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to something and tell me what I am like."

Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a righteous angel."

Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher."

Thomas said to him, "Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like."



Jesus said, "I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended."



Following was the Psalm , "The Ways of the Universe" also by Jan Novotka, and the Psalm reader was Brian Brown.



Then came the Alleluia "Journey's Ended, Journey's Begun" from the recording Spirit Alive (Weston Priory)



"Journey's Ended, Journey's Begun to go where we have never been, to be beyond our past, moments of lifting up transcending death, rising in transparent light to the fullness of God's presence."



The Gospel Reading was Matthew 6: 26-28, which was read by Fr Steve Dunn,cp who followed this reading with a homily focusing on the cosmological perspective needed to answer Thomas' often posed question: "What time is it?"

"What time is it? " Steve asked. "In this case, for the lilies of the field and birds of the air, as well as the Green Mountains , especially the Green Mountain Monastery, and each of us honoring Thomas' 94 years."



Ann Berry Somers, the niece of Thomas Berry then gave the Eulogy. Her Eulogy was filled with warmth and humor and the reflection from a close family member, someone who met with Thomas weekly once he came home to North Carolina after his years of teaching and directing in New York City , was heartwarming and informative to the many present who had not participated in this aspect of Thomas's life.



Though her whole talk will be on the Thomas Berry website shortly, one story stands out in this writer's mind:



Ann told us that she was on numerous occasions able to press Thomas on some of the utterances he would make that begged elaboration. One instance was about the small self (each individual component of the Universe) and the Great Self -- the Universe in its wholeness. Thomas mentioned the meaning of it all.



"Well, what does it mean?" she asked her "uncle Brother" point blank.



In time Thomas replied that the meaning is in "the attraction between the small self and the Great Self" a theme that underlies his often quoted statement that the Universe is not a collection of objects but a communion of subjects and one of the great mysteries of existence.



She also told some humorous tales from Thomas's life: Once as the family was gathered around -- nieces and nephews and their children -- as he celebrated mass, he became "so animated by his own words" that he almost went up in flames as he gesticulated and his sleeve ignited from the flame of a nearby candle!



When Ann stepped down, we then rose to recite the Litany of the Saints written by John Becker in 1987, words adapted by Sisters Gail and Bernadette. This special Litany was recited at the Dedication and Blessing of the Monastery not long ago and it goes so deeply to the core of the human struggle that many people around the room were moved to tears.

This recitation lists the growing number of saints including now Thomas Berry himself and his contemporary, Ewert Cousins who passed away two days before Thomas. Many of us who had been mentored by Dr. Cousins shed an extra tear of joy and sorrow to see his name so tenderly added to this list that began with the Holy Family, all the archangels, continuing through the martyrs, reformers and leaders of the Church throughout the centuries, to holy men and women outside Church canon: Black Elk, Rachel Carson, Albert Einstein, to victims of violence, genocide and environmental (natural and manmade) disasters, and ended with this prayer:



God give new life

To this planet

To the Earth Community

To all children of the future

Send your spirit

In its fullness

That we may awaken

As one planetary body

Following theLitany of Saints , Sister Gail then invited everyone to anoint Thomas's casket with pine infused oil that lay in a small bowl to one side of the casket. Each person dipped a finger into the scented oil and drew close to the casket, marking their own glyphs of love and farewell onto the simple wooden box: hearts, spirals, crosses within circles. It was a deeply fulfilling and meaningful gesture.

The mass continued with more pieces from Mass in the Ecozoic and communion was accompanied with more music from Paul Winter who was stationed in the rafters above the congregation with all the other musicians and singers. A beautiful a capella piece of a poem by Mary Oliver was sung by Elizabeth Thompson and Amity Baker - "I don't know what a prayer is- but I do know how to lay down in the grass and pay attention."

At the closing, Sr Gail asked for women in the room who had had a heart connection with Thomas to come up, surround the casket and dance in a circle to the closing song, (Songs of the Angels by Bob Dufford). We danced, hands clasped together, walking to the right and then to the left, swaying for a moment and then back in the other direction. Another simple gesture of embrace and tenderness.



Then Sr Gail asked for some able bodied men to come up and carry the casket to Thomas's final resting spot in the upper meadow. Outside the monastery, at the foot of the ascent, Sister Bernadette sounded the Ram's horn to initiate the final climb. Sr Miriam MacGillis and Mary Evelyn Tucker also helped carry the casket . Before the final ascent, we passed through a ritual threshold where two women blessed us all with the smoke of burning cedar as a final purification before the act of burial.

At the summit, Paul Winter played his soprano sax as people prepared to lower Thomas into the Earth. The monastery bell tolled, one that is only rung when someone has died, and Thomas was lowered into the fresh Earth by those gathered.



To the side of the gravesite was a large bowl of red earth from Thomas's birthplace -- the red earth of Greenbsoro , North Carolina which

Srs Bernadette and Gail had collected on one of their visits to Thomas.



Once the casket had been lowered, Sister Gail invited everyone to toss a bit of this earth from "Greensboro South" to mingle with that of "Greensboro North." Red roses were present so that we could also bid farewell with delicate rose petals. Shovels were ready for those who wanted to help fill up the grave. This went on for a long while, as people shed tears and said their final good-byes.



A final song was sung,



"Our brother is here; we give him your hand."

"Bathe him in your love

Clothe him in your care

Send him along

With the wind and a song

And the rains of the earth in his hair."



— from Bathe Him in Your Love, by Joe & Maleita Wise



Slowly people gave their leave and made their way down to the tent for the sharing of food.



The day honored the spirit of Thomas in every way and allowed those who loved him to participate intimately in committing him to the final embrace of his beloved meadow.


---------------------------------------------------------------------

I received this today in an email from one of the groups I belong to and thought it would be good to pass it along to my blogging friends. In the eulogy given by Sister Gail, I could not help noticing that Thomas also had a mystical nature experience at a very young age similar to my dear late friend Dr.Alfred B. Starratt that set him on his course in life. I honor them and thank them both for their Soul prints they left us.

woodsman

“Krishnamurti was like other human beings—the sum of his memories and experiences. How could he completely disown them? If none of those people he came to know had existed, what would he have been? He himself said in one of his dialogs at Saanen in Switzerland in the 1960s, “We cannot live without memories. If you had no memory at all you would be in a state of amnesia and wouldn’t know what you are doing, your name or where you lived. Memory obviously has a place.” Yet he could say in another time: “Memory is not necessary. I am not locked into the past…Memories are ashes of everything dead and buried.” He has been quoted as saying in a discussion in India: “There is never a sense of coming back to a relation. There are no anchorages: there is simply a moving on.”

I could and did understand that. Life flows and changes. Earlier friendships or loves are not necessarily lasting. But I agree with and respond totally to Aldous Huxley’s charmingly simple confession: “It is a little embarrassing that, after forty-five years of research and study, the best advice I can give to people is to be a little kinder to each other.”

From Helen Nearing’s book: LOVING AND LEAVING THE GOOD LIFE
----------------------------------------------------------------------

It was my privilege and honor to meet this remarkable woman back in the summer of '87 after a year of being in Maine. I had already read, LIVING THE GOOD LIFE, a decade before, that she and Scott Nearing co-authored back in the '50's. At the time I read the book, I was living on a farmstead near the Maryland/Pennsylvania line. I bought the book at a Goodwill store second hand, paid 25 cents for it and had no idea of what a bargain it was to be for me to gain that practical knowledge and wisdom that these two back-to-the-land pioneers expressed on those pages. They both left NY city, back in 1932, during the great depression, to become self-sustaining homesteaders in Vermont, until 1951. They built all their buildings from stone, had magnificent gardens and set up a small maple syrup business that gave them the necessary funds to carry on their experiment. Scott, at the time, was 50 years old when they first started this project and it wasn't until 1983 that I heard on the radio news, that he had died in Maine, at the ripe old age of 100, still homesteading and living the good life. I moved to Maine in 1986, wondering if Helen was still around, and by a quirk of fate, I went one day into a local library, and just by accident discovered a whole section of articles and books by the two of them on conducting the whole experiment again for another 30 years in Harborside, Maine. WOW, I thought, what incredible people! I was intent on meeting Helen, somehow. I later found out that Helen accepted visitors so I managed to get in touch with her, and we set up a day for my visit in July with post cards. I took my family and a friend, and travelled to the coast off the Penobscot Bay, to spend four-and-half wonderful hours with such a gracious host and kindest human being as one can ever meet in this lifetime.

Years ago when my wife and I were studying at an ashram in the mountains of India, my wife had a clear but difficult vision of death in her family. I tried to reassure her that images of death were simply a part of the meditative process. Sadly I was wrong. Ten days later we received a telegram that began, “Your brother Paul has died.” When we read further we discovered that the telegram was sent on the day of her vision, and that Paul had died on that day in exactly the manner she had seen. We have all heard stories like this. This is because we are connected in consciousness . This fact is the basis for compassion.

There is a neurological basis for compassion as well. In the 1980’s, Italian scientist Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues discovered a class of brain cells called “mirror neurons.” Extensive research since that time has shown that through our mirror neurons, we actually feel the emotions, movements and intentions of others. Researchers describe this natural empathy as part of the social brain, a neural circuitry that connects us intimately in every human encounter.

In Buddhist psychology, compassion is not a struggle or a sacrifice. Within our body compassion is natural and intuitive. We don’t think, “Oh my poor toe or finger is hurt, maybe I should help it.” As soon as it is injured, we instantly respond because it is a part of us. Through meditation we gradually open the boundaries of consciousness to compassion for all beings, as if they were part of our family. We learn that even when our compassion is lost through fear and trauma, it can be reawakened. Faced with a crying child in a burning house, a hardened criminal is as likely as anyone else to take the risk of rescuing her. We all have moments when the openness and beauty of our Buddha nature shines.

Excerpted from Jack Kornfield’s book: THE WISE HEART

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Twenty-three years ago I had a dream that ended with the face of my father-in-law appearing and then fading away into blackness. He was looking at me with opened eyes and a kind of contorted look on his face. Just another strange dream I thought at the time, and I kind of forgot about it. A few days later my wife told me that she had not heard from him that Thursday evening and wanted me to go over to check on him, he lived in an condominium about 10 miles away. It was rainy night and I was pleased to see that the lights were on and his car was in the parking lot. I knocked on the door, there was no answer but I had a spare key to his pad, I opened the door aways and yelled for him... nothing. Then I proceded to check the rooms and didn't see him. I felt a little relieved, and thought maybe he was visiting one of his neighbors, as I headed to the door to leave. Then, instantly, I remembered I passed by the kitchen and didn't turn the light on. I hit the switch and there he was lying on the floor, eyes opened and the exact look on his face that I saw in my dream. It all came suddenly back, I was stunned! He had died of a heart attack, one of the finest guys I ever had the privilege to know. That was one of the many powerful experiences that shook me to my core about the mystery of the nature of time and the power of dreams and my own sense of compassion.
The quantum physicist, Fred Alan Wolf, wrote an interesting and provocative book that I later read, called, The Dreaming Universe, where he theorizes that dreaming is the basis for consciousness and makes a very plausible argument for it.

woodsman
----------------------------------------------------------------------

In this book, I argue that Jesus‘s vision isn’t impossible to realize. Yes, it is radical and mystical. None of that has changed. But the underlying dilemma –how to live as Jesus wanted us to—can be resolved. In fact it must be resolved if Jesus is to have any meaningful future. In order to find the answer to the Jesus riddle, we must begin with radical surgery, cutting through the timeworn Jesus that all of us know (even those like me, who were not raised in the Church). That traditional version of Jesus was constructed as a compromise; it accepts the essential failure of Christ’s vision, so we must go beyond it.

From Deepak Chopra’s Introduction to his book: THE THIRD JESUS

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Some time ago, a guest speaker at my UU church gave a talk about a book written by a Russian author, Nicholas Notovitch called: THE LOST YEARS OF JESUS. For those that have read the NewTestament, why is this large gap in the life of Jesus from about the age of 12 to about 30 missing? Was he in Egypt, as some suppose, or did he wonder off to Persia, India and then Tibet, as Notovitch and many others have argued for, having traced his possible path in 1894, through these countries and seen the evidence in archives that has been kept in secret for centuries in their monasteries. The great yogis, Yogananda and Ramakrishna knew about these texts, as well as others who wrote books on this subject such as Elizabeth Clare Prophet who wrote, THE LOST YEARS OF JESUS. Jesus was called by the name Issa, and taught and learned in several places along the way ending up in Tibet in those missing years. Swami Abhedananda traveled to that Tibetan monastery and witnessed a part of the text in 1922 that the Russian had seen quoted here: “Thus he returned to his homeland at the age of twenty-nine and began spreading the word of peace amongst his oppressed countryman.” If so, he returned with the great spiritual understanding of the Eastern religions when he first began teaching. Over the years, it has become very plausible that this is so in my mind, as you read into Chopra’s book about this third Jesus. The first Jesus is the historical one, the little sketchy bio information we have from the Gospel writers. The second is the traditional one we have all learned about from the Christian churches,and there are hundreds of different sects of Christianity all with their unique interpretations and creeds. The third is the one that could be called the Cosmic Christ. I consider this was the one that Carl Jung spoke about with his concept of the "Christ Consciousness"Willian James, the American psychologist,that wrote,THE VARIETY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE,stated the existence of this higher stage of consciousness could be discovered in all the world's religious literature. Sri Aurobindo believed that mankind would eventually evolve into this new consciousness, if we didn't destroy ourselves in the meantime.

Anyone who has ever read the Gospel of Thomas, or Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, LIVING BUDDHA, LIVING CHRIST, should be able to see that so many of the teachings of Jesus and Buddha readily parallel with one another. Thomas Merton deemed Thich Nhat Hanh to be his spiritual brother. One of Merton’s last conversations with Brother David Steindl-Rast, Merton told him he saw no contradiction between Christianity and Buddhism. It has always been interesting to me that the Gospel of Thomas was almost accepted into the canon of the New Testament. What was the motivation why those early church fathers rejected it? It reminds me so much of how difficult it was for 300 years of modern science to accept the paradigm shift that took place early in the 20th century when the materialistic Newtonian physics was insufficient to understand the quantum world. Will Christianity also go through a similar paradigm shift before it is totally dies, according to Bishop JS Spong in his book, WHY CHRISTIANITY MUST CHANGE OR DIE? Does our conventional understanding of Christianity require a reformation to discover its true message, the one that was lost in that distant past as the early Christians struggled to make sense of what Jesus was teaching. We live in a post modern world,where deconstruction of man’s beliefs and religious truth is taking place more rapidly and leaving so many in a black hole by creating a kind of religious schizophrenia between our heart and mind, as science advances to explain all external truth, and where the mystical, as the core and depth of all inner religious truth has been discarded or forgotten.

Yogananda once said. “The Great Ones, like waves, bathe in the Eternal Sea, and become One with it. Disciples make all the trouble and differences. They begin to create narrowness and bigotry. The pure Message becomes diluted with ignorance. Humanity drinks of the polluted waters and then cannot understand why the thirst remains. Only pure waters can quench thirst. The time has come to separate truth from falsehood, knowledge from ignorance. All truth and knowledge must be sued to combat the black doubts and superstitions hedging humanity in the prison of unhappiness, that the mighty flood of Truth may inundate the gathered.”


Chopra does a brilliant job of interpreting so many of the sayings of Jesus and how they connect to the religions of the Hindu, and Buddhist contemplatives which are much older than the Christianity we have come to know. For instance, Chopra states in his book, “The Gospel of Truth, accuses conventional Christians of missing the whole point of Jesus, falling into blind worship instead of trying to seek enlightenment…”I agree, that path to enlightenment is a more difficult one to travel for many people, who only want their religion to be handed to them so they can memorize it, but only end up not really living it and only paying lip service to it. The basic principle of compassion and forgiveness seems lost in this menacing age of fundamentalism where we keep hearing the “Holier than thou” shouted from those that believe they possess the final truth. In an age where nuclear weapons and their proliferation is now on a fast tract,we fail to see the unity that lies at the core of all spiritual religious thought, therefore missing the message of Love that the third Jesus, the Cosmic Christ, magnified and reflected in the way he lived and died.

woodsman

The theologian, Bernard Loomer was known for a question that he often asked his students, "What is the size of your soul?" Robert Hardies, in an article printed in the summer edition of UU World Magazine 2007, discusses his learning about spiritual growth from this teacher and I quote him here:
"Loomer showed me that spiritual growth isn't about a vertical ascent to heaven but about growth in every dimension at once. It's spirituality in 3-D. Growth in spirit doesn't measure one's proximity to a God above, but rather the spaciousness of one's own soul--its volume, its capacity, its size. We need to grow souls that can encounter the other as a unique subject, not an object-- in the words of Martin Buber, a 'Thou', not an 'it.' We need souls that can take in the world in all its complexity and diversity, yet still maintain our integrity. And we need souls that can love and be in relationship with all of this complexity. Instead of fight or flight, we need a spiritual posture of embrace." ---------------------------------------------------------------------
I have seen too many so called "religious people" giving up on the world and in flight or fight mode, because it is thought to be a messy and awful place and we shouldn't be concerned about what happens to it. All focus should be devoted to the next one. To me, that has never been a mature spiritual path to follow, if we are all here to expand our souls. As co-creators with the Divine, we are obliged to play our parts to do what we can to help make this world a little better than how we found it. There is work for everyone to expand their souls and hearts in all the tension and diversity our lives witness in this mystery of Being. Lewis Mumford, the American Philosopher, once said, and I paraphrase him here, that all the wisdom for mankind to survive already exists and is available, but there is still not enough mature minds yet to appreciate it. He could have said mature souls, for wisdom is a soul thing to me. The work of soul is before us, to learn and care for the Creation and for each other, this was the original blessing of the Cosmic Soul for all us.

woodsman