Creative Energy

This slender volume distills into its elegant pages the most essential wisdom of Thomas Berry's Dream of the Earth, called by Dr. Donald B. Conroy, President of the North American Conference on Religion and Ecology, ''quite possibly one of the ten most important books of the twentieth century.''According to Berry, noted eco-theologian and historian, our present-day problems - from polluted air and waters to moral bankruptcy and rampant materialism - stem from the basic relationship of human society to nature. We have come to see ourselves as above the world, and free to plunder it, rather than as integral members of an intimate earth community. Berry offers an inspiring vision of an alternative society in which we recover our connection to the life-sustaining mystery of the earth's creative energy and establish a new set of ''biocratic'' human priorities based on the needs of the planet.