Mia Ambroiggio sits down with Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-founder/co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, to discuss their recent launch of the Living Earth Community website. The Living Earth Community is a virtual knowledge commons that weaves together scientific, spiritual, humanistic, and legal perspectives on the liveliness, intelligence, and creativity of the natural world. Their discussion covers the development and background of this knowledge commons, the importance of drawing together interdisciplinary dialogue, and Mary Evelyn’s vision to witness a shift in both ecological consciousness and conscience.

This Environment editorial presents a conceptual framework for understanding sustainability through the lens of the Living Earth Community, the online knowledge commons created by the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. The Living Earth Community emphasizes relational and ethical connections between humans and the more-than-human world. The editors emphasize that current environmental policy and scholarship can benefit from rethinking the Earth not as a source of expendable resources, but as a community of interdependent subjects and systems.

Four scholars discuss the possibilities of spiritual ecology as a path toward reintegration in the face of a disintegrating world. This article first appeared in Atmos Volume 9: Kinship (p. 246-269) with the headline “The Soul of the World.”

Reading the work in this issue of Orion, readers are brought back to the vibrant potential of ritual to renew their sense of cosmological belonging and Earthly entanglement. They are reminded that they are woven into nature, which has its own rituals of birth and death, mating and migration. Rites of nature–sunrise and sunset, seasonal variations, bird choruses and whale song–are primal nodes of transformation, drawing humans into the great fecundity of life.

Thomas Berry’s essay “Our Way into the Future: A Communion of Subjects” is a visionary call for humanity to reimagine its relationship with the Earth—not as conquerors or consumers, but as participants in a sacred community of life. Originally published in 2006 by Sierra Club Books. Reprinted in 2015 by Counterpoint Press.

Thomas Berry’s essay “Earth as Sacred Community” is a profound meditation on the spiritual and ecological dimensions of our relationship with the planet. Berry challenges the dominant Western worldview that treats Earth as a collection of resources or objects and instead calls for a radical reorientation: to see Earth as a sacred community of subjects, each with intrinsic value and purpose. Originally published in 2006 by Sierra Club Books. Reprinted in 2015 by Counterpoint Press.

Thomas Berry invites us to recognize the Earth as our origin, sustainer, and guide: alive with spiritual presence. In this chapter, Berry laments how Western traditions often overlooked this dimension, unlike Indigenous peoples who discerned the land’s sacredness. Berry envisions a spirituality rooted in the unfolding story of the universe, where humans emerge as the “heart of the cosmos.” Such a vision integrates science and wisdom traditions, calling us to a renewed intimacy, reverence, and responsibility toward our common Earth home.