I’m working with others to develop what we call a religious naturalist orientation or an ecospiritual orientation, and these books have deeply guided my path and inspired the writing of my own book.
I wrote
The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved
The ecospiritual/religious naturalist orientation is presented as a promising candidate for grounding the articulation of a planetary ethic that addresses…
Astronomer Carl Sagan can be said to have launched the ecospiritual/religious naturalist trajectory with this book, upon which the TV series was based, later writing: “A religion that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge.”
Two seminal quotes: “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
* Spacecraft missions to nearby planets * The Library of ancient Alexandria * The human brain * Egyptian hieroglyphics * The origin of life * The death of the sun * The evolution of galaxies * The origins of matter, suns and worlds
The story of fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution transforming matter and life into consciousness, of how science and civilisation grew up together, and of the forces and individuals who helped shape modern science. A story told with Carl Sagan's remarkable ability to make scientific ideas both comprehensible and exciting.
Philosopher Loyal Rue, an important mentor of mine, coined and developed the concept that our science-based understandings of cosmic, planetary, and biological evolution represent Everybody’s Story, a notion he first proposed in Amythia: Crisis in the Natural History of Western Culture. He writes with lucidity, grace, and deep wisdom, and is frequently quoted in my book.
This exhilarating tale of natural history illuminates the evolution of matter, life, and consciousness. In Everybody’s Story, Loyal Rue finds the means for global solidarity and cooperation in the shared story of humanity.
The day the second atomic bomb was dropped, Clabe and Leora Wilson’s postman brought a telegram to their acreage near Perry, Iowa. One son was already in the U.S. Navy before Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Four more sons worked with their father, tenant farmers near Minburn until, one by…
Thomas Berry called himself a geologian, and wrote this book at the same time as Everybody’s Story, neither author aware of the other. An ordained Catholic priest, he later said that “the bible should be put on the shelf for 100 years” while we attend to planetary exigencies. Seminal quotes: “The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.” “The environmental crisis is fundamentally a spiritual crisis.”
Thomas Berry is one of the most eminent cultural historians of our time. Here he presents the culmination of his ideas and urges us to move from being a disrupting force on the Earth to a benign presence. This transition is the Great Work -- the most necessary and most ennobling work we will ever undertake. Berry's message is not one of doom but of hope. He reminds society of its function, particularly the universities and other educational institutions whose role is to guide students into an appreciation rather than an exploitation of the world around them. Berry is the…
Astronomer Chet Raymo wrote a weekly column for the Boston Globe called Science Musings, and is a masterful storyteller and delightful human being.
Here are some quotes about the nature of scientific inquiry. “Delight in the unexpected is part of the lifeblood of science. Almost alone among belief systems, science welcomes the disturbingly new.” “Science is a spider’s web. Confidence in any one strand of the web is maintained by the tension and resiliency of the entire web.” “Science, like the play of children, satisfies a deep-seated need for escape from the boredom of fixity and the trauma of chaos.”
In what he describes as a "late-life credo," renowned science writer Chet Raymo narrates his half-century journey from the traditional Catholicism of his youth to his present perspective as a "Catholic agnostic." As a scientist, Raymo holds to the skepticism that accepts only verifiable answers, but as a "religious naturalist," he never ceases his pursuit of "the beautiful and terrible mystery that soaks creation." Raymo assembles a stunning array of scientists, philosophers, mystics, and poets who help him discover "glimmers of the Absolute in every particular." Whether exploring the connection of the human body to the stars or the meaning…
A fresh take on the difference between trauma and hardship in order to help accurately spot the difference and avoid over-generalizations.
The book integrates the latest findings in brain science, child development, psycho-social context, theory, and clinical experiences to make the case that trauma is much more than a cluster…
Annie Dillard joins Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson as my favorite “nature writers.” Annie is pithy, often wry, insisting that we notice and guiding us with her own noticing.
A classic quote: “In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe. If creation had been left up to me, I’m sure I wouldn’t have had the imagination or courage to do more than shape a single, reasonably sized atom, smooth as a snowball, and let it go at that… No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe.”
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek has continued to change people's lives for over thirty years. A passionate and poetic reflection on the mystery of creation with its beauty on the one hand and cruelty on the other, it has become a modern American literary classic in the tradition of Thoreau. Living in solitude in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Roanoke, Virginia, and observing the changing seasons, the flora and fauna, the author reflects on the nature of creation and of the God who set it in motion. Whether the images are cruel or lovely, the language is memorably beautiful and poetic,…
The ecospiritual/religious naturalist orientation is presented as a promising candidate for grounding the articulation of a planetary ethic that addresses global concerns like climate change. The book offers accurate and lyrical access to our science-based understandings of nature with a focus on biology, targeted to readers with limited science backgrounds. Each chapter concludes with a non-theistic spiritual and/or moral response to these understandings. Full color.
Noam Chomsky has been praised by the likes of Bono and Hugo Chávez and attacked by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Alan Dershowitz. Groundbreaking linguist and outspoken political dissenter—voted “most important public intellectual in the world today” in a 2005 magazine poll—Chomsky inspires fanatical devotion and fierce vituperation.
When Lara was four years old, her father moved from Rochester, New York, to Anchorage, Alaska, a distance of over 4,000 miles. She spent her childhood chasing after him, flying a quarter of the way around the world to tug at the hem of his jacket.
