‘Origin Story’ by David Christian
Allen Lane, 2018 ISBN: 978-0241254684 Reviewed by Ian Mowll [...]
Allen Lane, 2018 ISBN: 978-0241254684 Reviewed by Ian Mowll [...]
William Collins (2017) ISBN: 978-0008226299 Reviewed by Ian Mowll [...]
Christian Alternative (a John Hunt Publishing imprint) 2017 [...]
Practical Inspiration Publishing, 2018 ISBN: 978-1788600453 Reviewed [...]
Columbia University Press ISBN: 978-0231176989 Reviewed by [...]
Beyond Human Stories, 2018 ISBN 978-1979726252 Reviewed by Trevor [...]
GreenSpirit Book Series, Title No. 8 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, [...]
GreenSpirit Book Series, Title No. 9 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, [...]
North Atlantic Books, 2018 ISBN: 978–1623172480 Reviewed by Ian Mowll [...]
With a Foreword by Larry Dossey North Atlantic Books [...]
Coronet, 2017 ISBN: 9781473630109 Reviewed by Marian Van [...]
Paul Francis, 2017 ISBN:9780995758612 Reviewed by Marian Van Eyk [...]
Chelsea Green, 2017 ISBN: 97811603587464 Reviewed by Marian [...]
Moon Books, 2017 ISBN 978-1785355738 Reviewed by Piers Warren _____________________________________________________________ [...]
This book is about integrating spiritual values and techniques into everyday life and making intuitive connections with the place where ancient wisdom affects our daily life.
Mary Reynolds is a talented Irishwoman with ancient magic in her blood and a sublime sense of beauty, both of which she brings to her work as a garden designer. Her aim is to create gardens that are very natural places, gardens in which the energy flows freely and abundantly and which also evoke in us a sense of homecoming, in that they reconnect us with the pulse of Nature and remind us that we, too, are part of the natural world.
Two vivid accounts of sailing pilgrimages the author recently undertook in his small yacht, Coral, from the southern coast of England to Ireland, and to the far north of Scotland. Yet his book is not simply a day-to-day account of things that happened or had to be done in order for him to reach various historical sacred places of interest. Its richness lies in his skill of including additional material, writers, and sharing thoughts and knowledge he has about Nature, and our interactions and relationships with her.
In this beautifully written book, Sara Maitland sets out on a series of walks through ancient forest and woodland in Britain seeking the symbiosis between forests and fairy stories. She expresses a deep concern that the future of these two sources of healthy life experience is endangered.
This book is primarily about Thomas Merton (31 January 1915 – 10 December 1968), a Trappist monk in the USA. But it is also about Creation Spirituality (as articulated by Matthew Fox) and Meister Eckhart, a Christian mystic of the Middle Ages who influenced both Thomas Merton and Matthew Fox. It is a good way not only to understand Thomas Merton but also to see the strands of Creation Spirituality in Eckhart, Merton and Fox.
This ebook on Deep Green Living is a collection of articles written by fourteen different authors and is in four parts. The first is about feeling our sense of place on the Earth, the second looks at our lifestyles, the third is about wildness and the final part discusses our relationship with the natural world. The intention of the ebook is to help us to find our place in the world and to inspire us to live in good relationship with the Earth and all beings.
This is Matthew Fox’s autobiography – revised and updated in 2015. It describes his life’s journey; born in Wisconsin, USA and being bought up in a Catholic family, through his time in the Dominican Order, his blossoming as a theologian and teacher, his dismissal from the Dominican Order and how he joined the Episcopalian Church (the Anglican Church in the USA).
This author is an ecopsychologist with a counselling practice, and her specialty, which she describes as 'bioregional totemism' takes a much wider and more holistic approach than many of her colleagues. She calls it a self-created, spirit-centred neoshamanic path. It begins with a reminder that everything we touch came in some way from a natural source and that: …even living in the middle of the city, I spend every moment immersed in nature. "
William defines ritual as activities that bring about a change: “symbolic actions through which we can give our soul or psyche an important message”. He says that from ritual we can receive clear and potent messages; have a sense of belonging, but most importantly receive the gift of connection with Nature, with the other-than-human. Ritual can put us in direct connection with the mysterious, the numinous, the Other.
This book on the Green Man—that ubiquitous but endlessly varied symbol that takes the form of a human face sprouting greenery—is impossible to pigeonhole and its message is hard to pin down in a few sentences. But the Green Man is unpindownable. Not just because his origins are so ancient and so complex but because he represents something that is still alive and real and omnipresent. Despite humankind’s efforts to ‘conquer’, ‘tame’ and ‘manage’ Nature, Nature resigns supreme—because of course we are Nature, subsumed within it, just like everything else in the living world. So what this author has produced, as a result of her journeying around the UK and other parts of Europe in search of the Green Man – and her amusing but often rambly and confusing meanderings through history, literature, folklore, religion, sex, magick, shamanism, metaphysics and endless speculative cogitation – is a book in which the Green Man is never pinned down, yet ever present.
The decision to have – or not to have—children, says this author, is "a private decision with global consequences." Her book is intended to help those who are involved in making the decision whether or not to remain childless and includes all genders, creeds, cultures and the different reasons for considering this. Her greatest inspiration came from Stephanie Mills’ graduation speech, during the time when the population explosion began to cause concern. Stephanie said, "I am terribly saddened by the fact that the most humane thing for me to do is have no children at all."
A panoramic view of Earth-centred teachings in different spiritual and religious traditions. 10 authors cover 10 different traditions: Christianity, Judaism, Paganism, Daoism, Hinduism, Indigenous traditions, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism and Creation Spirituality (Creation Spirituality as articulated by Matthew Fox, which helped to lay the foundations for GreenSpirit). The territory covered is so vast that each chapter is often more of a personal reflection from someone either directly involved with the tradition or who is very knowledgeable about it.
This ebook is about the Universe Story (the story as revealed by science from the Big Bang to the present day) and how it can inspire us in our lives and help to create a better world.
Spiritual activism is about being both ‘spiritually active,’ i.e. inspiring others, as well as being ‘spiritually grounded,’ i.e. being a compassionate activist with protests and practical action. It has ten chapters covering a wide range of territory, each ending with a case study featuring a well-known person who has been involved in spiritual activism such as Julia Butterfly Hill, Gandhi, Muhammad (pbuh) and Desmond Tutu.
The thoughts and emotions that are stirred awake in us when we walk in a desert landscape have a different quality from those engendered by a walk in the depths of a forest. Different again are the ideas and images that come to mind when we marvel at a mountain peak or stand in a high place and look across a valley. And when we gaze out at the ocean or sit on the bank of a fast-flowing river or find ourselves in the middle of a grassy field, the inner scene changes again. In this unusual book, Mary Reynolds Thompson studies these deep connections between the Earth's primary landscapes and what she calls the 'soulscapes' of our inner lives and how this connection can be used for emotional healing and spiritual transformation.
pbk 328 pp North Atlantic Books 2015 ISBN: 978-1583949030 Reviewed [...]
This would be a good book for study in schools because it offers scientific and technical information about ecology, sociology and psychology at a level that is very accessible. The author, a Scottish environmentalist, relates this to the inner life and thence the outward actions of all of us. Essentially, it’s a book about climate change and the human mind-set that has brought it about but continues to deny any responsibility. It also gives us constructive suggestions for a way forward.
Beginning with an evocative quote from the Tao to set the ambience for the material that follows, this work creatively holds many diverse areas in an integral manner covering, with a commanding scholarship, such fields as economics, psychology, cosmology, ecology and spirituality. It also displays a strenuous commitment to issues of social justice combined with a path-breaking reflection on sustainability in a larger evolutionary context, exploring the work of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme in the context of cosmology.
Most urban spaces and buildings in the West are designed and built with no sensitivity whatsoever to these subtle energy currents. Which is why Jaime Lerner's book is called 'Acupuncture'. It is all about bringing life back into dead spaces and restoring the flow of energy to places where it has been blocked or stifled. Lerner, who was three times mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, and is also an architect and a popular advocate for sustainable and liveable urbanism, describes how some city planners have worked to restore life and dynamism to ailing urban areas.
In recent years, as modern life causes more and more of us to become emotionally disconnected from the Earth upon which all our lives depend, we are realizing that it is not just the land we live in that needs rewilding but our own selves. This means finding ways to break down all the artificial boundaries that we humans have tried to place between ourselves and the rest of Nature. It means recognizing that we are—and always have been and always will be—an intrinsic part of the Earth, cells in the body of a living planet. Furthermore, it means re-learning how to live our daily lives out of that knowing. It means coming back 'down to Earth' in the truest sense of that phrase: consciously re-immersing ourselves in every way possible in the natural world that surrounds is, both without and within. That way lies healing—for ourselves and our planet.
This book was inspired by a weekend gathering of Pagans and Christians in 2014 in which participants were invited to explore their prejudices and preconceptions, learn more about each other, and find common ground in ‘Celebrating Planet Earth’. It is divided into 3 main sections: Addressing our fears and prejudices, Possibilities for cooperation and The role of ritual practice, myth, music and poetry in each tradition and in inter-faith encounter. Each section has a number of chapters written by various participants and speakers who were at the gathering.
The churches have tended to regard creation as sacred only in so far as it reveals God to us and the focus is on our obligation to be responsible stewards rather than being in a real relationship with the rest of creation. Beck’s religious faith is important to him and he makes the case for Christian animism. The definition of animism that he uses is the attribution of a living soul to inanimate objects and natural phenomena and he argues that this is that is compatible with Christian tradition and the Bible.
This book describes itself as offering a path of self discovery in Nature. There is an introduction by Jack Kornfield, who commends the author for providing a way to: be joyful, see anew, be amazed. It has about forty sections, mostly of three or four pages, with a short teaching session, followed by guidance for a meditation.
In this useful book, Ingerman not only totally demystifies shamanism for the lay reader but shows how its various tools can also be used as a self-help toolkit by individuals. We can use it to bring our own mind body and spirit back into internal balance, provide our lives with new meaning and hope, bring ourselves back in balance with the rest of Nature and, most importantly of all, do our part in healing our damaged Earth.
This is a collection of essays dedicated, as the front matter tells us, …to all those working to preserve and care for the Earth and Her life systems…the most dangerous war humankind is engaged in is the war against nature. Until we can learn to live peacefully with Nature we will not live peacefully with one another. The seed is frequently referred to in belief systems because it provides such a powerful metaphor for the hidden depths within natural systems that are essential to our existence on this planet, both physically and spiritually; the spiritual and the practical are brought together seamlessly in the essays in this book.
Have we not always been led to believe that religion is the purveyor of mysteries and all that is supernatural rather than natural? And have we not learned that science destroys mystery by discovering truth? In fact, as Dietrich—professor of philosophy at Binghamton University—so thoroughly and competently explains, religion is actually a biological phenomenon, a property emerging from the process of human evolution. Meanwhile science, we have all discovered, is what destroys our mysteries and reveals to us all that is real about the world.
This is not simply a book about trees. It is a book about you and me and all of us and how we can draw on a reservoir of help and energy that we might not even realize is available to us—i.e. the help and energy of those silent, deeply-rooted companions whose presence we all tend to overlook.
I have not always been a fan of Russell Brand’s comedy; the little I heard did not strike a chord with me. And so I was surprised to read his book Revolution which is both refreshing and insightful. Rather like the Court Jester of the Middle Ages who had the King’s ear – Russell Brand is the modern day Jester – telling us how things really are and prodding us to change.
'Occupy Spirituality' is a superb dialogue between two important contemporary progressive Christian thinkers and activists. Though the subtitle partly suggests the book is focussed on the younger generation, there is nothing within the pages that is not relevant to us all, to the times in which we live and to the materialistic greed, bigotry and complacency that is bringing about the greatest spiritual crisis human and more-than-human life have ever faced. If this gives the impression this might a negative read, then it would be a wrong one. The book is truly inspirational. This is a spirituality that is prepared to get its hands dirty, to do something and work towards positive changes.
This is a book about Meister Eckhart, the 13th/14th century mystic who was born near Gotha in what was the Holy Roman Empire and is now in Germany. But the book is about much more than Meister Eckhart himself. Matthew Fox picks out key thinkers, philosophers, social and eco activists from modern times and shows how they have been influenced by, or resonate with, Meister Eckhart.
With her whole-hearted commitment to celebrating the Earth and its cycles, Glennie Kindred delves into the living tradition of our Celtic ancestors and arrives at a magnificent collection of sacred ceremonies based on the eight Celtic festivals: the Summer and Winter Solstices, the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes, the four cross-quarter points of Imbolc, Beltain, Lammas and Samhain. However, the celebrations in the collection are not in any way fixed or immutable; for her …they help us to discover more about ourselves and our intrinsic connection to Earth. Glennie believes we are free to celebrate the festivals in whatever way we choose, and her book is packed with suggested ways to do just this.
In a collapsing world, it is no good surviving physically unless we can also survive—and help each other survive—emotionally and spiritually, and the aim of this book is to help us do just that. The first two-thirds of the book describe and explain, in 109 easy-to-read, wisdom-packed pages, the psycho-spiritual preparations that need to be made for the collapse that has already begun, and why, even though the collapse may be a long, slow process, it is so vital that we start making them. The last third consists of a carefully-chosen set of 52 weekly 'meditations' – in the sense of quotes and thoughts to be pondered upon – all geared towards helping us deal with the collapse of our old world whilst also saving and guarding the seeds we hope to plant in the new one that will—we hope—eventually rise from the ruins.
An inspiring collection of personal stories, told by sixteen people who are each, in their own individual ways, involved in working towards what Joanna Macy calls 'The Great Turning,' i.e. the movement away from the madness of our materialist, militaristic, industrial culture and towards the sanity of living sustainably and co-operatively on our planet.
This author, a scientifically trained veterinarian, who has worked with animal all her life, talks to us about the way animals think and feel and dwell--unlike us--in the ever-present moment. They have a lot to teach us. She encourages her readers "…to think of intuitive, telepathic communication with animals as a natural ability that you once had and have temporarily misplaced rather than as a supernatural power that you are trying to acquire." It is, she says, a skill that is achievable by all of us. A lovely, thought-provoking and insightful book.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin devoted his life to reuniting the artificial fracture between science and religion and Thomas Berry furthered this reunification by repositioning the human in the unfolding of an evolving universe, integrated and interdependent with the rest of the life systems of the planet. Albert LaChance, himself a six-year, face-to-face student of Berry, brought this new paradigm into his work as a poet, psychologist, addiction recovery professional, and as a mystic and scholar of religion. Along with his daughter, Rebecca LaChance Goodwin, he explores, here, the development of this crucial shift in human understanding and its implications for the future.
Our planet is in crisis, largely as a result of human actions and attitudes over the last few centuries. This is a book about how we can develop spiritually and try to avoid what seems to be the impending extinction of humankind.