A ceremony commemorating the life and work of cultural historian and environmental thinker Thomas Berry, who died in June, will be held tomorrow (Sept. 26) from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The Thomas Berry Award & Memorial Service will include speakers, performances, music by Paul Winter and others, and an award presentation intended to recognize efforts to continue Berry’s work.

According to the press release: Teacher, writer, and sage Berry is often associated with the term “Great Work,” not only because it served as the title of his seminal 1999 book on environmental awakening, but also because his vast range of scholarship and the enlightenment it inspired can aptly be described as such.  From his academic beginnings as a historian of world cultures and religions, Berry developed into what he described as a “geologian,” a scholar of Earth and its evolutionary processes.

“The planet Earth is something more than a natural resource to be used by humans,” Berry wrote.  “A viable future for the human community rests largely upon a new relationship between human communities and the planet we dwell on.”

That future would be difficult to achieve, Berry realized, and would require what he called “the great work” – in politics and law, economics and business, education, and religion.  “From here on,” he explained in a 2006 interview, “the primary judgment of all human institutions, professions, programs and activities will be determined by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore or foster a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship.”

Typical of the consciousness he raised is the work of Martin S. Kaplan, the 2009 winner of the Thomas Berry Award, who for more than 20 years has promoted progressive environmental grant making at numerous organizations and academic institutions, and was instrumental in establishing the Thomas Berry Foundation in 1998.

“Thomas Berry contributed to the realization in our times that environmental issues are more than science or policy, they are also issues of the spirit,” said Mary Evelyn Tucker, who with her husband, John Grim, heads the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale and directs the Thomas Berry Foundation, co-sponsors of the event.  “How well we respond to the planetary challenges that face us now will be determined by our ability to form an Earth community with a common future for all species.”