The Place of Our Belonging: A Work for Children and Educators Mentored by Thomas Berry

Edited by Peggy Whalen-Levitt

Greensboro, NC: Peggy Whalen-Levitt, 2023

Book Description:

The Place of Our Belonging is the story of an intimate communion of thought and practice, a small and deep work for children and educators, that formed as The Center for Education, Imagination and the Natural World at Timberlake Earth Sanctuary in the foothills of North Carolina from 2000-2022. The story begins when geologian Thomas Berry retired to his birthplace in the foothills of North Carolina to be near his family and the place he had known intimately as a child. It was in the foothills that eleven-year-old Thomas Berry experienced a “magical moment” in a meadow near his home that became a touchstone for his life and work. It was in the foothills that the seeds of his vision for a sacred universe story were sown. And it was in the foothills that Thomas Berry entered into conversations with Carolyn Toben from 1999 to 2009, captured in her book Recovering A Sense of The Sacred: Conversations with Thomas Berry, that became the foundation of the Center’s work. Thomas Berry’s description of his magical moment in “The Meadow Across the Creek” gave us a re-orientation for our lives, particularly for the lives of children. He was calling us to enter into communion with a sacred universe, so that all of our human efforts might emerge from the deepest place of our belonging. “The Meadow Across the Creek,” and all of its resonances, became a guiding image for the Center’s work. How, we wondered, could we create a space to nurture a bond of intimacy between children and the natural world? How might we put this mutual in-dwelling into practice? How might we create a context where children could enter the depths of their own being in order to be present with the meadows and woodlands, the creeks and ponds, the wind and sun, and all the creatures of Timberlake Earth Sanctuary, just eighteen miles from the meadow of Thomas Berry’s childhood?  The Place of Our Belonging takes you deep into the inner landscape of this work for children and educators, devoted to the living reality of an emergent and sacred universe.

PEGGY WHALEN-LEVITT is a founding Director of the Center for Education, Imagination and the Natural World. She is the editor of Only the Sacred: Transforming Education in the Twenty-first Century and the Center’s journal Chrysalis.