Bodley Head, 2022
ISBN: 978-1847927101
Reviewed by Ian Mowll
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As the publisher of this book so succinctly puts it: For most of human history, and in almost all the world’s cultures, nature was believed to be sacred, and our God or gods to be present everywhere in the natural world. When people in the West began to separate God and nature in modern times, it was not just a profound breach with thousands of years of accumulated wisdom: it also set in train the destruction of the natural world.
I have always found Karen Armstrong’s books to be helpful and this book did not disappoint. As ever the author writes with breadth and depth, drawing from her wide knowledge and clarifying ideas in helpful and succinct ways. I have read many times from different authors that Christianity (as expressed in Western culture) has separated spirit from Nature but that such separation is not present in many of the world religions. Such is the clarity of the author’s writing that, for me, this important point has been thrown into sharp relief and I feel that I now have a much deeper understanding of it.
Armstrong starts with explaining the difference between mythos and logos; mythos is about meaning making and logos is about rational analysis. During the Enlightenment period, logos (the rational) was elevated above mythos. The problem that followed on from this is that according to Enlightenment thinking, we should now be in Paradise because for many of us, all of our physical needs are met. We are not in Paradise because we still need meaning-making in order to make sense of our lives within a wider context. And this is where mythos is so important. The author shows how imagination and the arts are essential to help us with meaning-making because a good part of it is beyond rational explanation.
I particularly enjoyed the discussions about various Chinese forms of spirituality, Jainism, the book of Job in the Bible and, at the very end of the book, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. From all of this, I sense that there is a benevolent life-force in the Universe which is part of me, and part of my purpose in life is to access this life-force and grow with it.
It is good to see that the book is no Pollyanna view of Nature. As in the discussion of the book of Job in the Bible, Nature contains serenity and violence, beauty and ugliness and it is a matter of holding the paradox in which a loving Universe is held in tension with what appears to be needless destruction.
Finally, I fully agree with the author that empathy is deep part of spirituality; a good spirituality broadens us by helping us to see things from other points of view so that the disenfranchised (both human and other-than-human) can be heard. From an eco-spiritual standpoint, we particularly need to give voice to the other-than-human.
For me, the book is summed up in the author’s words: Unless there is a spiritual revolution that challenges the destructiveness of our technological genius we will not save our planet. It is my hope that this transformation happens before it is too late for the ecosystems of the Earth.