I have been engaged as a teacher of religion and ecology since the first Earth Day 50 years ago. That has entailed writing some prize-winning books,Earth Community, Earth Ethics(1996) and Earth-honoring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key(2013). Now I want to pass along distilled learnings to my grandchildren as they face a planet in tumult. The form—love letters—and the audience—future generations as represented by my grandkids—moves me to focus on effective communication of a highly personal sort to young people on matters vital to their lives. It’s a nice bookend near the end of my own life.
I am well aware of the threats to human society and the planet. I welcome anyone who understands them and has thought them through, then turns to sources of wisdom to guide us. Beal does all this and taps sources of wisdom readily available to us (in his case he draws on major biblical themes and does so with a critical eye for both their benefit and harm).
With faith, hope, and compassion, acclaimed religion scholar Timothy Beal shows us how to navigate the inevitabilities of the climate crisis and the very real—and very near—possibility of human extinction
What if it’s too late to save ourselves from climate crisis? When Time is Short is a meditation for what may be a finite human future that asks how we got here to help us imagine a different relationship to the natural world.
Modern capitalism, as it emerged, drew heavily upon the Christian belief in human exceptionalism and dominion over the planet, and these ideas still undergird our largely secular…
I have taught this book with four quite different constituencies ranging from graduate students to members of a church congregation to professionals doing continuing education. For all of them, this was their favorite reading because it intertwined science with spirit and story so as to show them the possibility of a different relationship of humans to the rest of the community of life.
Called the work of "a mesmerizing storyteller with deep compassion and memorable prose" (Publishers Weekly) and the book that, "anyone interested in natural history, botany, protecting nature, or Native American culture will love," by Library Journal, Braiding Sweetgrass is poised to be a classic of nature writing. As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer asks questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces indigenous teachings that consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take "us on a journey that is…
Many people from all walks of life, even after many accomplishments and experiences, are often plagued by dissatisfaction, pervasive longing, and deep questioning. These feelings may make them wonder if they are living the life they were meant to lead.
Living on Purpose is the guidebook these people have been…
My own work, even in retirement, entails teaching and writing on changes in planetary systems that impact us dramatically (e.g., climate change). To engage students it is most helpful to have a highly engaging account of Earth’s own dramatic history over its 4.6. billion years. This book provides that in non-technical, jargon-free language that anyone of high school and college age, as well as older, easily understands.
"[A]n exuberant romp through evolution, like a modern-day Willy Wonka of genetic space. Gee’s grand tour enthusiastically details the narrative underlying life’s erratic and often whimsical exploration of biological form and function.” —Adrian Woolfson,The Washington Post
In the tradition of Richard Dawkins, Bill Bryson, and Simon Winchester—An entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story.
In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place—in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were…
There is growing literature in both religious and secular circles about a needed sense of reverence for the Earth to counter an utterly utilitarian view that all life is present as resources for human use only. I commend Newell’s Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul to illustrate how a great tradition, Celtic spirituality, through its poetry, song, and way-of-life practices, draws deeply on the sense of the sacred that the soul knows and most people experience in some measure.
Leading spiritual teacher John Philip Newell reveals how Celtic spirituality, listening to the sacred around us and inside of us, can help to heal the earth, overcome our conflicts and reconnect with ourselves.
Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul offers a new spiritual foundation for our lives, once centered on encouragement,guidance and hope for creating a better world.
Sharing the long hidden tradition of Celtic Christianity, explaining how this earth-based spirituality can help us rediscover the natural rhythms of life and deepen our spiritual connection with God, with each other and with the earth.
Newell introduces some of Celtic Christianity's leading practitioners,…
Every month on the 13th, Maria Paula Acuña arrives at a barren spot in the Mojave Desert where she sees and speaks with the Virgin Mary. Hundreds of people follow her to the makeshift shrine, which Maria Paula named Our Lady of the Rock, to watch her and search the…
This work is one in the series of Explorations in Theology, Gender, and Ecology. Its distinction is a deep dive into the religious, ecological and gender dimensions of the modern fossil-fuel extractive economy that has become destructive of nature’s economy and human well-being at the same time that it has captured our way of life. Rowe takes the reader into the gender and theological underpinnings of corporate capitalism, thereby contributing to an emerging field of study, the Energy Humanities.Of Modern Extraction is cutting-edge work by a lucid writer who rewards anyone patient enough to take on this vital but complex topic.
Predominant climate change narratives emphasize a global emissions problem, while diagnoses of environmental crises have long focused a modern loss of meaning, value, and enchantment in nature. Yet neither of these common portrayals of environmental emergency adequately account for the ways climate change is rooted in extractivisms that have been profoundly enchanted.
The proposed critical petro-theology analyzes the current energy driven climate crisis through critical gender, race, decolonial, and postsecular lenses. Both predominant narratives obscure the entanglements of bodies and energy: how energy concepts and practices have consistently delineated genres of humanity and how energy systems and technologies have shaped…
Though it has not yet hit the news, Earth is undergoing an epochal shift that geologists and climate scientists describe as a shift from the Holocene (the Wholly Recent epoch) to the Anthropocene (The Age of the Human). Climate stability is giving way to climate volatility, mass uncertainty, and breathtaking extinction.
While this book of love letters to our grandchildren never shrinks from piercing honesty about what is happening, the tone itself is tender, caring, empathic, and graced with good humor. Stories abound, always linked to meditations on the possibilities of human nature and its pitfalls in the face of climate calamity. The whole yields insight, courage, and hope.
Gifts from a Challenging Childhood
by
Jan Bergstrom,
Learn to understand and work with your childhood wounds. Do you feel like old wounds or trauma from your childhood keep showing up today? Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed with what to do about it and where to start? If so, this book will help you travel down a path…
As a Veteran, I once dismissed Christianity, viewing it as outdated and irrelevant.
But as I witness the West sliding into chaos, I realize how wrong I was. It is no accident that Christianity is under assault while the West is being overwhelmed by a cultural virus that sows discord…
