Category Archives: Religion
‘The Spirituality Revolution: The Emergence of Contemporary Spirituality’ by David Tacey
When I was a child, everyone went to church (or chapel) on Sundays, or so it seemed. Spirituality and religion appeared synonymous. That is so no longer. The winds of change have blown hard in my lifetime, and you and I now live in a predominantly secular society – one of many in the Western world. But there is another strong weather pattern coming up against the wind. Religion may be in decline, but spirituality has never been so much in evidence. In a culture that now worships at the shopping mall yet comes away empty-hearted, there is a swell of yearning for a deeper connection – or a reconnection – with the sacred. Continue reading
Posted in Education, Religion, Spirituality
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‘The Path of the Blue Raven:From Religion to Re-Enchantment’ by Mark Townsend
BBC presenter Peter Owen-Jones puts his finger right on the spot when he describes Mark Townsend as “a priest on the edge.” As he reminds us, edges are always the places in the biosphere where we find the most diversity and the greatest creativity. In the noösphere, the same applies. The edge is where one finds people bold enough to move out of comfort and familiarity, to seek, to question and to birth new ideas. Continue reading
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‘Holy Night’ by Vincent Tilsley
Is it a novel? Is it a screenplay? What on earth (or in heaven) is it? Vincent Tilsley’s Holy Night is unlike anything else I have ever read. It also stirred up more excitement in me than any book I have read in a long time and stretched my mind to its furthest limits. Continue reading
Posted in Creation Spirituality, Religion, Spirituality
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‘Peace is the Way’ by Deepak Chopra
In Peace is the Way, Deepak Chopra speaks of the choice that contemporary people face concerning religion. Not religion per se, but religion in the ossified, tradition-encrusted form in which it appears to so many people today. Continue reading
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‘Tomorrow’s Christian: A new framework for Christian living’ by Adrian Smith
GreenSpirit member Adrian Smith sees the journey away from unquestioned tradition as forking into two slightly different paths. Continue reading
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‘Tomorrow’s God’ by Neale Douglas Walsch
Neale Douglas Walsch has probably done more than anyone in this last couple of decades to assist people in outgrowing their infantile images of ‘God’ as some old, judgmental, sky-dwelling patriarch in a nightie, and replace them with something closer to the Perennial Philosophy. His Conversations with God series of books and tapes has been remarkably popular, not least because his main tool is humour and he uses it so well. Continue reading
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‘The Living Universe: Where Are We? Who Are We? Where Are We Going?’ by Duane Elgin
How many of us, staring up into the unfathomable reaches of the Milky Way on a clear, moonless night, have felt a shiver run through us? Who could not feel a shiver of awe – perhaps even of terror – in contemplating his or her puny insignificance against a background of stars? Compared to the immensity of even this visible fragment of the mysterious universe, we are mere specks of dust. And yet… perhaps we are less puny and less separate than we think. Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, Important Titles, Psychology, Religion, Science, Spirituality
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‘Living with Honour: A Pagan Ethics’ by Emma Restall Orr
Emma is head of the international Druid Network and the author of ten books. She teaches courses worldwide, and lectures at universities and conferences on Druidry, environmentalism, healing, and women’s spirituality. Continue reading
Posted in Gaia, Philosophy, Practical, Religion, Spirituality
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‘Green Spirituality: One answer to global environmental problems and world poverty’ by Chris Philpott
From GreenSpirit member Chris Philpott comes a book, many years in the making, that is a compendium of attitudes and sources of wisdom about the spiritual basis of what it is to be green. In an inspiring Foreword, the author, scientist and activist Vandana Shiva suggests that this book could help us to rediscover what she calls a ‘spiritual sheet anchor.’ Continue reading
Posted in Creation Spirituality, Gaia, Religion, Spirituality
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‘Acorns Among the Grass: Adventures in Eco-Therapy’ by Caroline Brazier
In the summer of 2010, Caroline Brazier co-led a week-long eco-therapy group in her Buddhist community’s retreat centre in the French countryside. At the conclusion of the week, she began to write down her thoughts and reflections. In her words, “This book is the result. An account of a group and of a summer, interwoven with the ideas and therapeutic theory which framed our work, it is an invitation to share, to join the exploration and to experience the process of engagement in a healing relationship with nature.” Continue reading
Posted in Education, Gaia, Practical, Religion, Spirituality
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‘Green Kingdom Come! Jesus and a Sustainable Earth Community’ by Joe Grabill
The overall theme and objective of this book is to illustrate that Jesus of Nazareth was green. Grabill shows, from a study of biblical translations direct from the Aramaic and quotations from texts long ago eliminated from the bible by church politicians, that Jesus would probably be at the forefront of the green movement were he alive and teaching today. Continue reading
‘Shinto: A Celebration of Life’ by Aidan Rankin
Like most people in the Western world, I’d had little or no exposure to Shinto, the ancient, traditional spirituality of Japan. It was never included in my mental list of wisdom traditions and, I am now ashamed to say, if I thought about it at all I’d dismissed it as merely a set of rituals that Japanese people traditionally observed out of habit rather than conviction. How wrong I was. Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Practical, Religion, Spirituality
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‘Yoga for a World out of Balance: Teachings on Ethics and Social Action’ by Michael Stone
Within eco-spiritual literature there are few titles that satisfactorily relate Hindu Yogic teachings with contemporary green issues, or do little more than simply acknowledge a basic relationship between the two. Michael Stone’s Yoga for a World out of Balance beautifully highlights how the five yamas (traditionally translated as non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, chastity, and greedlessness and non-grasping) are essentially interwoven with global and social responsibility and Earth-centred practices . The yamas themselves are invariably recommended within various Yogic traditions as an important first stage of an essential eightfold path that was outlined in the influential Patanjali Yoga Sutra. Continue reading
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‘From Science to God: A Physicist’s Journey into the Mystery of Consciousness’ by Peter Russell
The book is written as a journey of discovery and Russell writes in the context of his own search to find a theory of consciousness. Apparently this is one of the major unsolved conundrums of psychology and even of quantum physics. It is possible to explain most human activities in terms of conventional science but how and why we should be conscious has still no satisfactory explanation. Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Science, Spirituality
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‘Sacred Gaia: Holistic Theology and Earth System Science’ by Anne Primavesi
As part of the development of a liberation theology, Anne Primavesi presents a critique of the view that biological evolution is driven almost exclusively by competitive processes and the way this has been carried over into the human SocialScape and used to justify the exploitation of humans and the natural world. Continue reading
Posted in Gaia, Philosophy, Religion, Science
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‘The Living Goddesses’ by Marija Gimbutas (Edited and supplemented by Miriam Robbins Dexter)
In this book Marija Gimbutas provides us with a scholarly but also readable account of the Goddess tradition of Europe from the late Palaeolithic and Neolithic eras, through the megalithic and henge building periods and into recorded history. Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, Gaia, History, Religion, Science, Spirituality, Uncategorized
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‘The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry’ by Rupert Sheldrake
The aim of this book is to encourage a fundamental and beneficial re-evaluation of the way the sciences are defined and practised in our modern world. It does so by carefully and systematically examining ten core beliefs that most scientists accept without question, all of which are in fact untested and untestable and which severely limit the ability of our modern sciences to respond convincingly to the challenges we face in the twenty-first century. Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, Gaia, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Science, Spirituality
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‘Planet as Self: An Earthen Spirituality’ by Sky McCain
‘Planet as Self’ argues for a radical rethink of our relationship with Mother Earth or Gaia and points out how beliefs – scientific or religious – can so easily be mistaken for truths. Nothing less than a paradigm shift in our basic beliefs is called for. Continue reading
Posted in Cosmology, Gaia, History, Important Titles, Philosophy, Religion, Spirituality
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‘Healing this Wounded Earth: with Compassion, Spirit and the Power of Hope’ by Eleanor Stoneham
The book is a call to action – to heal our wounds and our fractured society, and most importantly halt the violence we are inflicting on this planet before it’s too late. The author points out that, through increasing urbanisation, most of us have lost contact with the land and the soil and as a result part of our soul has died. She writes from a Christian perspective but draws on the wisdom of other religious traditions as well. She assures readers that her message is for those of all faiths or none: what matters is that they possess ‘the honesty of intention’ She tackles big questions such as how we move into a new era of social responsibility, lay the foundations of a just society and reform our economic system so that we value people and not money.
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Posted in Gaia, Health and wellbeing, History, Religion, Spirituality
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What is Green Spirituality? Edited by Marian Van Eyk McCain
“Green spirituality,” writes editor Marian Van Eyk McCain, is “a spirituality centred on this planet Earth, the only home we humans and our ancestors have ever known.” Rooted in the Earth and in all creation, greens’ spirituality focuses in a deeply connected way with living in and caring about and for the Earth and every living entity in and on it. Continue reading
Posted in Important Titles, Religion, Spirituality
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‘Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future’ by Bron Taylor
The overall aim of this book is to define and describe dark green religion which, reduced to one simplistic sentence, means a belief in the intrinsic value and sacredness of Nature, and to examine the influence of this strand of belief upon our contemporary culture, particularly in the West. Continue reading
Posted in Gaia, History, Philosophy, Religion, Spirituality
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‘Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World’ by Ken Wilber
Ken Wilber’s Integral approach, which is intrinsically value-free, is a unique method for understanding pretty much anything in a fully comprehensive, multidimensional and holistic way. It has the capacity to break up socio-cultural and ideological logjams and may well be the best tool available, right now, for achieving religious tolerance, peace and (when applied to ecological issues) sustainability. Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Practical, Psychology, Religion, Science, Spirituality
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‘Is there not a New Creation? The Experience of Early Friends’ by Anne Adams
The booklet traces the experiences and thinking of the Quaker movement in relation to creation, both looking at the roots of Quaker ideas before the 1600s and how it has changed since the beginning of Quakerism. Continue reading
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