Wild Goose Publications, 2024

 ISBN: ‎ 978–1804323465

 

 Reviewed by Ian Mowll.
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This is a wonderful book about Earth based spirituality, written by an author who has been involved in mainstream religion (Christianity) for many years but is now branching out and away from the restrictions of tradition towards green spirituality. 

He highlights nine luminaries and talks about their spiritual outlook and their connection with the Earth. These are: 

  • Seeking Vision – Thomas Berry
  • Seeking Earth – Nan Shepherd
  • Seeking Presence – Martin Buber
  • Seeking Awareness – Carl Jung
  • Seeking Wellness – Julian of Norwich
  • Seeking Love – Jalaluddin Rumi
  • Seeking Wisdom – Rabindranath Tagore
  • Seeking Meaning – Etty Hillesum
  • Seeking Faith – Edwin Muir

So many of these people have inspired me and many in GreenSpirit. So, it’s encouraging to read a book by someone who has had no connection with GreenSpirit but has such a similar outlook and vision. This affirms my view that green spirituality is something that many people are moving towards from different cultures and starting points.

I highlighted so many quotes from the book because they spoke to me so deeply. So, here are a just a few examples.

In the section Seeking Love – Jalaluddin Rumi, the author talks about Rumi’s view that love is the essence of spirituality. Here is my favourite quote: 

[Rumi] calls [his religion] “love–madness”, when we give ourselves to love without restraint. “Whoever’s calm and sensible,” he says, is in fact “insane!” For then we miss the heart of life (page 133).

I love this acknowledgement of the wildness of the spiritual and emotional journey. Our paths are not straightforward steps towards an obvious goal. But ones full of passion, breaking boundaries, and seeking the unknown. Rumi speaks about this idea so well and I feel inspired by his writings.

In the section Seeking Meaning – Etty Hillesum the author talks about Etty Hillesum who was a Jew in the Netherlands during the Second World War. At the end of her life, she was taken to a concentration camp where she experienced the horrors of the Nazi regime and died. Yet, through all of this, she never lost her love for the Earth and all life. This reminds me of the book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl who also experienced the horrors of concentration camps. It seems that sometimes, deep suffering can forge deep meaningful responses. I am in awe of people who experience such pain and yet are not blighted by such suffering. They give me real examples of what is possible in life.

One of the constant themes in the book is to see ‘God’ (or whatever you call the mysterious spiritual essence of life) as innate – within us, the Earth and all beings. For instance, Rumi says: There is a “spring–source” that rises under everything (page 126). This is one of the key shifts from traditional Christianity which tends to emphasise the transcendent. Seeing the spirit of life in the Earth and all beings is a key part of the green spiritual outlook.

Finally, the author talks about his own experience of being in religious exile. By this he means breaking away from the traditional Church where he says his own, and by implication other people’s deep yearnings, are not met. He says that the authority of religious belief is going but we still have a need to express and fulfil our yearnings. And he shows that Earth based spirituality can help meet these yearnings. This is my experience too, so I feel deeply affirmed by the author’s writing and I can thoroughly recommend this book to anyone on a green spiritual journey.