Reverend Billy Talen - The Earth Wants YOU

The Church of Stop Shopping is in the vanguard of a new movement that challenges this consumer society that is killing our planet. Mike Roselle, Climate Ground Zero and Coal River Mountain Watch

Ssssh, listen... let the Church of Stop Shopping exorcise your fear, doubt and burnout, and join the Earthalujah Revolution! Jess Worth, BP or not BP?

This call to action is at once sobering and encouraging. We have fucked up really badly, but the ability to see itis the first and hardest step toward fixing it. Douglas Rushkoff, author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus

Reverend Billys ALL IN! bodies and voices... not just clicks and posts, for this small village we call Earth. Preach On! Obang Metho, Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia

The Stop Shoppers pack a whoop. Roberto Sifuentes, La Pocha Nostra

In between satire and silence, there is a space of penetrating reckoning for all vibrations that flow counter to the balance of Nature. And from this dynamic and tricky space, the Honorable Reverend and his Holified Choir will shout, sing and sermonize a soul-bound love message of Truthalujah! John Sims, The AfroDixie Remixes

He seems to be writing while his actions are going on, like he can write while hes hand-cuffed. Benny Zable, The Nimbin Environment Centre, NSW Australia

Reverend Talen is a warrior whose aim it is to wake the sleeping to the realities of climate change. He is guided by a higher power and fueled by love. Clayton Thomas-Muller, member of the Mathais Colomb Cree Nation (Pukatawagan), Manitoba

The Earth Wants You takes readers deep inside the heart, mind and balls of the activist-artist. Reverend Billy rocks hard! Annie Sprinkle, artist, ecosexual sexecologist

He was a comic act. Now hes evolved into a man compulsively challenging the true extent of the right to protest. Anohni, creator of the song 4 Degrees

I had a dream about the Reverend Billy last night. He came to Harvard Divinity School. People were distraught that no one had authorized him as a reverend to preach, and yet he preached. Tim DeChristopher, Peaceful Uprising

The Church of Stop Shopping helps us ready ourselves for the times ahead by finding solace in the persistent force field of living beings. Severine von Tscharner Fleming, The Greenhorns

Reverend Billy will have you raising your hands in Hallelujah while the Earths plight brings you to your knees. Zen Honeycutt, Moms Across America

This is a movement that you hold in your hands, which you will then feed back to the wind, to the fire and the water. Leah Borromeo, The Cotton Film: Dirty White Gold

This is a new Psalm for the Earth, for her human and other-than-human inhabitants. Beth Stephens, ecosexual artist, professor

The Reverend reminds us that we are complicit in the delusion that we are somehow separate from the evolutionary process of Mother Earth. Alnoor Ladha, The Rules

This is a kaleidoscopic journey, from disobedient grandmas fighting fracking to rebellious choirs against police racism, from profound animistic prayers on ecological collapse to complex political critiques of the NGO sector. John Jordan, Laboratoire dImagination Insurrectionnelle

Hes hysterically serious. Andy Shallal, Busboys and Poets

Billy, Savi and the choir have love and optimistic humor, and they dont give up on people. David LaChapelle, surrealist, photographer

Out of the murky and uncertain darkness of climate chaos strides Reverend Billy and his posse of radical possibilitarians, shouting and singing and praising the light that binds us together in a common struggle for LIFE ITSELF. I see it! I see the light! Lifealujah! Mark Read, The Illuminator

Earthalujah! Earthalujah! Amanda Starbuck, Rainforest Action Network

Reverend Billy Talen

City Lights Books | San Francisco

2016 by Reverend Billy Talen

All Rights Reserved

Cover photo John Quilty

Photos on Erik McGregor

Photo on John Quilty

Photo on Kevin Ryan

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Talen, William, author.

Title: The earth wants you / Reverend Billy Talen.

Description: San Francisco : City Lights Publishers, [2016]

Identifiers: LCCN 2015049238| ISBN 9780872867079 (paperback) | ISBN 9780872867086 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Environmentalism. | Environmental responsibility. | Sustainable development. | Political participation. | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Civics & Citizenship. | PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / General. | NATURE / Environmental Conservation & Protection.

Classification: LCC GE195 .T34 2016 | DDC 363.7dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049238

City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore

261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133

www.citylights.com

for Savi and Lena

Our old ones were talking about this. And they were saying that there is coming a time when the Earth will rise up because she needs to cleanse herself. And it could go one of two ways. The Earth rises up and then the people rise up with her. Or the Earth rises up. And the people dont. And then they fall away. And they are no longer here.

prophecy recounted by Debra White Plume of the Lakota Nation, and retold at Occupy Wall Street by Kandi Mossett of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara people