[MUSIC] Drew, welcome. It's so good to see you again. >> You too, thanks for having me. You met Thomas Berry a number of years ago, but I believe you first read his book, didn't you? Dream of the Earth. And tell us about the effect of reading that book when you encountered it? >> Well, it was life changing for me. And to read Thomas Berry talking about the comprehensive context of the story of the universe, that we have a new story of the universe now, and that this changes everything about how we think about who we are as human beings, how we think about our connection to the unfolding of the universe and the Earth. I mean these were ideas that I had never encountered, and I had been looking for something meaningful. I was going to school and going to high school and feeling like there was not much energy, not much excitement, not much enthusiasm. And when I encountered Thomas Berry talking about the grandeur of the cosmic process as it unfolds, that it can explode into existence and then transform itself into galaxies and then stars that can create planets. And planets that can create oceans, and clouds, and music and fish and birds and dinosaurs and human beings and mammals. And the poetry, and the music, and the art and the celebration and that this is all one unfolding, seamless interconnected process that is creative, that is mysterious, and that is celebratory. It was life changing. I had grown up in school learning about science, and it had never been particularly interesting to me. I'd always been kind of more interested in art and the humanities. And science was never presented in a way that I felt like it was exciting. But to hear Thomas Berry talk about it, it was something like a sacred revelation. He was talking about the scientific story, but with the power of a sacred vision. And that was really exciting to me. This was a sacred vision that was not based on dogma. You didn't have to be a believer in any narrow sense, but you could awaken to this world of mystery and creativity, and it was all around us. It was in every star, it was in every leaf, it was in every being, it was stupendous. >> One of the things that you've been able to do better than almost anyone is bring to visibility even the dysfunction of movements of justice for the human and justice for the earth. So give us a feel for that environmental justice movement and your own weaving into that world. >> When you look at issues such as where toxic sites are located we find that, often times they're located in poor communities and in communities of color. Now, that's an environmental issue but it's also a justice issue. So when you look at that kind of connection between environmental issues and social justice issues, you realize that they're actually completely interconnected. The same world view that exploits people is the same world view that exploits nature. >> We need new human earth relations. Mutually enhancing, healing relations. How is that sense of new human earth relations the counterpoint to these problems, this disfunctionality? How does it speak to the environmental justice issues? >> I think at the root of a lot of our ecological and our social justice problems is the modern world view, one that's based on greed, one that's based on materialism, one that's based on exploiting resources. And we've treated human beings as resources to be exploited, and we've treated nature as resources to be exploited. So I think we need a complete transformation in our way of thinking. And the same way we recognize that a human being is a scared reality. A human being is a sacred being that is being that is worthy of reverence and respect. We also need to recognize that the earth Is a sacred being, that every species is sacred, that every individual animal, plant, human is a sacred being. So, it's this fundamental idea of reverence, respect that I think flows through ecology and social justice. You can't even treat a thing as a thing, because there's no such thing as a thing. So what we often think of as things, in our society we sometimes even think of animals as things. When we look at the history of slavery and segregation and oppression and exploitation, there are workers around the world who are being treated as things right now. So we have had the tendency in our society to thingify sacred realities. We thingify other people, we thingify nature. Barry is saying there is no such thing as a thing. Even a rock is a sacred mystical reality because the Earth was completely rock four billion years ago and yet through that process rock has transformed it's self into oceans, clouds, music, poetry, human beings, the Buddha, the great spiritual teachers of the world all emerge from this process that is the unfolding earth itself. So nothing is a thing. Everything is a sacred reality with infinite preciousness, with immense potential to unfold. So the idea of reverence and respect is something that connects our ecological thinking and our social justice thinking. The entire universe is composed of sacred beings, precious sacred realities. And we're here to commune with them, not to exploit them. >> Poetry becomes essential, doesn't it? As deep mode of knowing this being-ness of the universe and the special presence of things to each other. This is not dead matter. So that's been your art, that's been your great contribution. To help us to see through metaphor and poetry this universe in new way, can you tell us about your road into poetry? >> Sure. I think poetry is absolutely critical to understanding life and reality. I think reason and rational thinking is, of course, an important mode of knowing. But we need the artistic, we need the spiritual, we need the mystical and we need the poetic. And Teilhard de Chardin talked about the within of things. He said science is great at describing the without of things, the surface of things, but we really need something like poetry to have a feel for the within of things. Poetry and the arts awaken us to the essence of reality, and there's a deep wisdom that is more powerful than rational thought. Doesn't mean that rational thought is unimportant, means that needs to be complemented with a fuller and richer mode of understanding. And I think that's what poetry does. >> Tell us what kind of poetry really speaks to you, and in which you write and express yourself. >> Well I come from what could be called the hip-hop generation, so I grew up listening to rappers and hip-hop. And I was always impressed by the creativity of their word play, by their ability to talk about significant issues. One of the characteristics of hip-hop is it sometimes it's a challenge to the powers that be. There's a level of critique that you find in hip hop that also can be present in rock and roll at times, can be present in folk music, can be present in the blues. But there is a way to provide a message and a way of critiquing a society in some of the injustices in that society. And so it's a way to share the messages about justice, about ecology But do it in a way that's enticing. No one likes to be preached at. Speechifying and textbooks will only take us so far. The arts have been critical to human education, to human inspiration throughout history. Thomas used to say, celebration is the key to human energies. Celebration is the key to human energies. The arts are all about celebration. Thomas would say, you can't have energy if you don't celebrate. So the arts and poetry are critical to the type of energy that we need to move into a positive future. >> Great. And they're healing, right? And they're hopeful. And you say, over and over again, energizing. And just to push this a little further with the hip hop and the rhythm, everybody loves the rhythm that it holds us to and grounds us with. And we come alive. There's a beat. Can you give us a feel for why that beat has come alive in you and your work, but your generation too? What is it that hip hop is holding for us? >> Hip hop is a new, exciting expression of the ancient oral tradition. And humans have always spoken rhyme. Humans have always used rhythm and repetition and rhyme, as well as images and metaphors to make language come alive. That's the key thing. It doesn't matter whether it's poetry, or hip-hop, or folk music, or rock and roll, or the blues. The essential thing is that the language is fresh and new and exciting. Because if the language doesn't change, if the language doesn't use these techniques of rhythm, rhyme, repetition, then we can't connect to the wisdom. Even though there may be deep wisdom in the words, the language has to be fresh. And so the language has to constantly renew itself, has to reinvent itself. The word cliche just means language that is no longer alive, language that is stultifying. That's what a cliche is. It's not that there's not wisdom in the words, it's just we can't connect to the wisdom, because the language isn't fresh anymore. So language has to constantly reinvigorate and renew itself. And in recent decades, hip hop has been at the cutting edge of that. So it's connected to the ancient oral traditions. It's connected to the poetic traditions of all the ages. But it's that new, fresh, exciting expression of it that enables people to connect with the energy. >> Poetry as a whole of course is having a big revival isn't it? But the electrifying power of your own writing and your own bringing forth something from your experiences is so magnificent. The sense of hip hop as a collective act too, poetry's not just for the individual in silence of their room. But what is it about the collective element of hip hop and poetry today that's so appealing? >> Well, the arts are about communication. And like you say, there has been a tremendous revival of the spoken poetry form, what we call spoken word poetry and poetry slams. And you have young people all over the planet engaging in this very expressive, very animated form of spoken word poetry. And it's just a joy to get together. I really see it as a continuum with the ancient human tradition of getting together, sharing stories, using linguistic creativity. >> The planetary elements of this movement became very clear to me almost by chance but fortunate chance, when I happened to be watching the congressional hearings on climate change. And Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin was saying to the audience there, we've got to thinking of the future in terms of this huge environmental issue. And she said, I happened to have a poem written by through Drew Dellinger which speak exactly to this issue. Will you give to the audience that poem so that we cann all feel what she gave at that moment in Washington? >> Sure, it's 3:23 in the morning and I'm awake because my great, great grandchildren won't let me sleep. My great, great grandchildren ask me in dreams, what did you do while the planet was plundered? What did you do when the Earth was unraveling? Surely you did something when the seasons started failing, as the mammals, reptiles, birds, were all dying. Did you fill the streets with protest when democracy was stolen? What did you do once you knew? I'm riding home on the coma train. I've got the voice of the Milky Way in my dreams. I have teams of scientists feeding me data daily and pleading, I immediately turned it into poetry. I want just this consciousness reached by people in range of secret frequencies contained in my speech. I am the desiress Earth. Equidistant to the underworld and the flesh of the stars. I am everything already lost. The moment that the universe turns transparent and all the light shoots through the cosmos, I use words to instigate silence. I'm a hieroglyphic stairway in a buried Mayan city, suddenly exposed by a hurricane. A satellite circling Earth, finding dinosaur bones in the Gobi Desert. I am telescopes that see back in time. I'm the pre-session of the equinoxes, the magnetism of the spiraling sea. I'm riding home on the coma train, with the voice of the Milky Way in my dreams. I am myths where violets blossom from blood like dying and rising gods. I'm the boundary of time, soul encountering soul and tongues of fire. It's 3:23 in the morning, and I can't sleep. Because my great, great, grandchildren ask me in dreams, what did you do while the earth was unraveling? I want just this consciousness reached by people in range of secret frequencies contained in my speech. [MUSIC] Marya it's so good to see you. Will you introduce yourself to us? Where do you live? >> I live on the grounds of a Benedictine monastery in Dayton, Wyoming. We're located on the banks of the Little Tongue River at the base of the Big Horn Mountains. And my nearest neighbors are three horses and six nuns. >> How did you come to be aware of and have a feeling for the universe story? >> One of the ways into the universe story was through the night sky of living in Montana and Wyoming for almost 30 years. Where I live now and when I lived on the reservation, there's almost no Light pollution. And so the stars are all the way down to the horizon of the mountains that are right behind where I live, and I am drawn in by their beauty. And beauty creates relationships. And so, even though it's very distant, somehow I felt an intimacy with the stars. And I'm a Franciscan, and St. Claire of Assisi would say, prayer began with gazing. And she would get up in the middle of the night, as was the practice in the 11 and 12 century for contemplative nuns, to pray gazing at the starts. So I thought I'd try it. So I set my alarm and get up at night and sit at my window and just be with a star long enough that the sense of separation evaporates. That's what happened to me. And also, of course, all the while I'm gazing, gazing is not just look at, it's a respectful presence with the star. >> Say a little bit more about that energy and creativity of the universe. >> It's very important to me. I had worked in an inner city school for six years surrounded by projects and the most awful limitations for children and dangers that I could imagine at the time. And then years on the reservations also. And to realize that within me and behind me, for billions of years is creativity at work, was an inspiration. It just helped me. >> Tell us a little bit about your experience on the reservation and how the sense of the universe was present there among native peoples. >> At first, I mean, I was totally unprepared for moving to Crow country. We didn't have any kind of cultural orientation except to simply go there and participate in the life of the people. And I immediately realized, very quickly, that I was meeting people who had a whole different world view than I had. And for one thing, they spoke of the universe with familiarity. When they would be orienting me toward a ceremony for example, or trying to explain a word in their language, or how they were relating to each other or the mountains, and I was intrigued very, very much by their world view. I had realized that I felt very boxed in by my Western world view, and suddenly, a wall dropped in front of me. And there was Earth and the universe in a whole new prospective from them, from the Crow way of looking at things. I couldn't get enough of it. I was trying to learn everything about their language and their relationship with the rest of the natural world and the universe somehow. It got in a bigger context. >> Yes, and the Crow have this amazing ceremony that John and I have been to, as well- >> Yeah I know, [LAUGH] it's so amazing. >> Of the Sundance. >> Yes. >> And can you just give us a glimpse of one of the stories he told me once? The water is carried by the women into the Sundance. >> Yes, yes, I was invited to be one of the four water carriers into the Sundance Lodge after the people there in the lodge had been fasting from food and water for four days in the July heat. And it was a furnace there. So, we came in with water and stood in the back of the lodge facing east. And Haywood Big Day was the leader of the whole ceremony. And he stood facing the rising sun with his arms outstretched, and his wrists were dripping eagle feathers. And that sun came up, and suddenly, for me, every separation dropped that I ever had in my mind. The rising sun, the horizon, the whole Prier Valley, the stream I could see, the grasses and all of us in that lodge, as well. And the light, it was just all one. And my job was to give water to these people who were very, very thirsty, and I forgot about my job. And they're Sister, Sister, get over here. [LAUGH] Give us water. That moment where I felt like any separations I had in my mind about the universe, about the natural world, just dropped into one flow of energy. It was- >> Beautiful. >> Really a mystical moment for me I guess >> I would say so. And those rituals that the Crow and other indigenous peoples have around the world are so cosmological, aren't they? The shape of the Sundance. And when you think of it, peoples around the world, for literally thousands of years, have lived with those kinds of rituals and ceremonies and orientations. And that of course is carried over into the so-called later religions, shall we say, that rituals try and orient us to a larger cosmos, don't they? >> Exactly, exactly, and they do. I mean, at least the Northern and Crow rituals I was privileged to be invited into, really do. That's what led me to want to learn the cosmology as we have come to know it here in the West. That's what drove me. >> And you started studying? Madly, madly. >> I did, I did, I read The Universe Story of course. And I wanted to know the origins of everything, and that's what led me then to study cosmology. And one of the classes was we had to read this big picture book. And I got to the end where it was saying where the universe might go next. And suddenly, I was overwhelmed by the presence of the universe, right there in my little studio apartment overlooking San Francisco Bay. It was as if the universe just rushed in at me. You know how when you're baking and cooking and the kitchen is full of steam and it's cool outside and you pull open the doors and throw up the windows? In rushes, fresh air, and that's how it felt. I felt like, I was overwhelmed and I couldn't read anymore. I just had to sit in the presence of the universe. It was really like waking up. There you are. Here you always are. >> [LAUGH] Beautiful. Marya, what was like for you as a nun to go into a prison? How did you feel? Were you nervous? >> Yes, I was very nervous, because I was supposed to be doing this with someone else, Sister Helen Praishon. She was going to carry the ball for what we were going to do there, and then I would just kind of slip in at the end with a comment or two. But then, she couldn't come. So going into the jail, it's a jail actually, all the doors slamming shut behind me, and all the concrete and steel is so different from where I live, that I was scared, really. And then we get special clearance to go into the room where the men would be coming out from their rooms. And they're sitting on the floor in front of me and I'm looking at all these tattoos, and I thought, what do I have to say to them because I had been up all night trying to think of something but it was Helen who was supposed to carry the ball and she wasn't there. So I said yup, Earth Hope is what I do, what gives you hope. And sometimes hope starts out small. And that's what led me to tell the story. And I could tell they were interested. One guy, he had the finger tattooed on his forearm see, and when he would lift up his hand to ask me a question [LAUGH]. >> [LAUGH] >> There it would be. And he was the one then, how is this going to stop be from burglaring if I learn this story? Will it help me stop burglaring, because I'm getting tired of being in jail. Then, after we did it in that one group, then we went to another group, then another unit, they called them. Then we went to where the people were in lockdown, and so it was two tiers of prisoners in lockdown, so they couldn't come out, but what they did, they made an exception for this presentation. They opened their little food tray doors and they open their slots that they can look out of in the door itself for everybody at the same time. And here I am then facing these two floors of open slots. Men were kneeling on the floor looking through their little food tray slots and I'm telling The Universe Story. And when I finished it their hands came out through the slots, the food tray slots, and they clapped. But now what we do is we have a correspondence course on The Universe Story that goes to the lockdown units. I think almost 50 people have gone through the course through correspondence. >> And what did that burglar say? How did he respond to the universe story eventually? >> Well, about three weeks later when we came back, he said I'm getting it now. I am so connected. It's all one. I'm connected to everybody. It doesn't feel right to break into people's homes and take their stuff. >> So we made the connection. >> So that's what I find so exciting about telling the universe story in the jails, is it transforms people. It gives them a new sense of, a bigger sense of who they are beyond how they were treated as children or the education they never got or how they survived through gangs. And the story gives them something bigger, a bigger way to think about themselves. >> And they go there. Our goal is to give them a new sense of self. And that's what the story does. You're way more than your little tiny story. [MUSIC]
