Vandana Shiva et al. - Sacred seed

SACRED SEED

Introduction by Dr. Vandana Shiva

Essays by:

His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
Pir Zia Inayat-Khan His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje
Sister Joan Chittister, OSB Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee Chief Tamale Bwoya
Swami Veda Bharati Tiokasin Ghosthorse Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Blu Greenberg & others

THE GOLDEN SUFI CENTER PUBLISHING

The way we live and act is determined by the perceptual lenses that are shaped by our beliefs and values. Our belief that it is our right to use as we wish, any part of the biosphereair, water, soil, other life-formshas created problem after problem. If life is sacred, then we cannot treat other organisms as if they are cars or computers, we must act with humility, respect, and love. This book provides a powerful perspective to temper our unseemly rush to engineer everything within the biosphere.

David Suzuki, author, The Sacred Balance

There is no more beautiful gift from nature than the seedand its protection is vital to our survival. Vandana Shiva, Navdanya, the Global Peace Initiative of Women, and the brilliant spiritual leaders who contributed their voices to this book are all elevating our dialogue about seeds, and the profound role they hold for the future of all humankind.

Alice Waters, chef, author, and culinary visionary

These essays establish, with clarity and eloquence, a single crucial insight: our spiritual well-being and our approach to the use of the Earth for our nourishment are inseparable. We have woken up to the fact that the problem of food security is painfully pressing for the coming generation: what this book tells us is that we cannot address this without thinking again very radically about how we see our human growth and nurture; and we cannot cultivate a spirituality that pays no attention to the facts of hunger, waste, environmental degradation, and so on. This is an exceptional testimony to the holistic thinking our society so desperately needs.

Dr. Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and current Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge

A reverence for our ancient seeds is essential to our very survival. Sacred Seed explains in beautiful detail how and why we must protect them.

Ed Begley, Jr., American actor, director, and environmentalist

This book is timely and timeless in its importance. The seeds that bring forth life and food for our planet and its people are indispensable for the continuity of all living things. Thus our care for seeds is one of the most vital things we can do amid our many challenges of the present. These articles light a luminous path forward.

Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-director, Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University

Ever since I watched the women in Bangladeshi farm families carefully saving seed from one generation to the next, Ive pondered on this greatest symbol of our connection through time to those who came before and those who will come after. This book is a rich storehouse of wisdom for all the springs to come.

Bill McKibben, founder, 350.org

Through the seeds, they say, speak the voices of the ancestors. Its hard to imagine a more timely moment than nowwhen the global biodiversity of seeds is so dangerously under threat, and with the hopefulness and promise that seeds symbolize and embodyfor this gathering of sacred voices to emerge. Gift yourself with the vitality of this collection, and share it, to revitalize your community and encourage restoring a sense of sacredness to our foods, and health, and security.

Nina Simons, president and co-founder, Bioneers, and past president, Seeds of Change

Caring for seeds is caring for one of the most evolutionarily profound and numinous expressions of life. At this critical time in human history, seeds could not be more important, and this beautiful and transformative book, Sacred Seed, is an exquisite poetic testimony that reconnects us to the very web of life. Each author offers elegant wisdom and heartfelt praise of life-giving seeds.

Osprey Orielle Lake, founder, Womens Earth and Climate Caucus

Sacred Seed is not only a homage to the endangered nourishment of our planet but to the spiritual source of our lives. Each reading is both a teaching and a prayer, and the beauty of the illustrations alone is enough to make me want to keep this book by my bed or next to my meditation pillow for years, there to provide inspiration when I need it. Drawing from diverse sources, it feeds our longing for the sacred while it awakens the energy to act so that our grandchildren and theirs will enjoy strong, healthy, and sacred lives.

Mirabai Bush, senior fellow and associate director, The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society

Through gorgeous photography and essays spanning many traditions, this book offers a diversity of lenses to view the sacredness of seed.

Charles Eisenstein, author and speaker

How many are your works, Lord! The earth is full of your creatures teeming with creatures beyond number. May the glory of the Lord endure forever (Psalms 104). Whether secular or religious, we must recognize and preserve the bounty of nature or we stand to lose our very humanity.

James Hansen, former director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and current director of Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions Program at Columbia University Earth Institute

Preserving seed diversityour vast and beautiful heritage of seedsis one of the most pressing crises facing the human community. Our future depends on our courageous actions now. May these essays by great spiritual voices from around the world awaken us to value, care for, and stand up for the seeds that nature has gifted to us.

Frances Moore Lapp, author, Diet for a Small Planet and EcoMind

To name a seed as sacred is to make a small but emphatic protest against its commodification, genetic manipulation, and corporate control. But such naming does more; it moves us beyond protest and calls forth a necessary reverence for the material stuff of Creation. In this fine collection of essays the subject is seeds, but what these authors call for is nothing less than the re-enchantment of the world.

Fred Bahnson, author, Soil and Sacrament: A Spiritual Memoir of Food and Faith, and director of Food, Faith, and Religious Leadership Initiative at Wake Forest University School of Divinity

This rich and much needed collection of essays inspired in me my own prayer, The Prayer of the Seed: I am but small and seemingly insignificant yet I bear life in my tiny body. I am a source of hope for a hungry and hurting world. So I pray, treasure me as precioussource of life for Gods creatures.

Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, chair, Global Peace Initiative of Women, and former general secretary, National Council of the Churches of Christ

This book, its very theme, and its reverent illustrations have the taste and scent of holiness! The humble seed on which we totally depend is just as invisible, humble, and unappreciated as holiness itself often is. As a Franciscan, I know that is exactly where we find the greatest mystery and the most alluring truth.

Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M., Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, New Mexico

a testament to the relevance of the seed selection of our ancestors that we have an obligation to continue for ourselves and future generations; seed saving, and by extension appropriate selection, is a natural behaviour of humankind and a very important part of our positive position in the potentially infinite cycle of life on Earth. Without governing ethics, science has continued in a direction of seed manipulation that can only be honestly described as sociopathic behaviour governed only by short-term greed.