A Mission to Map, Part II Catholic Geographic System’s executive director, Molly Burhans accounts a recent tip to Rome where she participated in the Vatican Youth Symposium to discuss solutions for addressing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the REIL Network, to focus on sustainable strategies for following the stewardship calling of Laudato Si’, and day with Esri Italia to talk about maps see how their work is helping earthquake response teams in Italy.
“Thomas Berry... was a gentle soul whose intimacy with nature and broad erudition enabled him to speak with a compelling voice about the immense story behind creation and this precious life on Earth, declaring “the Universe is primarily a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.” .. He believed the only way to effectively function as individuals and as a species is to understand the history and functioning of our planet and of the wide universe itself, like sailors learning about their ship and the vast ocean on which it sails. ‘It takes a universe to make a child,’ he said, adding that he was ‘trying to establish a functional cosmology, not a theology.’ The amazing, mindboggling cosmological perspective, he felt, can resuscitate human meaning and direction. The most important spiritual qualities, for Berry, were amazement and enchantment. Awe is healing. A sense of wonder is the therapy for our disconnection from the natural world.” (Father Thomas Berry -- A Tribute, Shams Kairys, 2009). My most recent trip to the Vatican began with a long flight to Rome via Seattle and Paris. Every time I fly I am filled with awe. There are some authors who change your life and the way you view the world for-
ever. I include ecologist Richard T.T. Forman as one of the most influential authors in my life for helping ignite that very sense of healing awe, amazement and enchantment that Thomas Berry spoke of. I remember the first time I read Forman’s book Land Mosaics it transformed every flight thereafter. Each time I board a plane it is with an almost child-like excitement to look out the window and observe the subtle patterns in the landscape from a vantage point of 20K ft+. Working with modern satellite imagery, I get almost the same effect at my desk each day, but being in flight adds a element of slowness, a lack of control, you have no choice but to putter along through the sky and grasp all you can as urban-scapes dissolve to ticky-tacky suburbs filled with cul-de-sacs and closed communities, to rural homes dappling a country side to wild wild nature bursting forth with large swaths of deep green brush below the blue sky - always leaving me with a sense of yearning to be with it, to celebrate life in it, celebrate in the alleys among the never-quite hustle of cement jungles and stillness of secluded valleys of deep pine forests among the slow migrations
Hall of Maps in the Vatican Museums - I am constantly inspired by the ancient cartographers in Church.
CATHOLIC GEOGRAPHIC SYSTEM 1