Praise for Hope Beneath Our Feet
Uplifting and diverse perspectives on aligning ourselves with the fullness of our own possibilities as individuals and as a species. The bottom line: flavor and savor every moment, especially the toughest ones, with not-knowing, with good will, imagination, kindness, wisdom, humor, community, and action. My father-in-law, Howard Zinn, said it so well: Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Full Catastrophe Living and Coming to Our Senses
Hope Beneath Our Feet is just that. With penetrating clarity it takes us into the depths of our essential nature: our courage, brilliance, and resilience. We are called to take advantage of the greatest opportunity for conscious self-evolution the human species has ever been given. A real masterwork.
Barbara Marx Hubbard, author of Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential and founder of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution
There is no more meaningful action we can take than to struggle on behalf of life on this planet. The profoundly hopeful and inspiring essays in this anthology help us remember our place in the web of life and recover a deep awareness of our own ecological identity, motivating us to continue our efforts.
John Seed, founder of the Rainforest Information Centre in New South Wales, Australia, and co-author of Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings
This fierce collection is a pragmatic and poetic call to action for the environmental predicament that weve authored. Its message is compelling and, if acted upon, contains powerful medicine to heal ourselves and the planet.
Richard Strozzi-Heckler, author of The Leadership Dojo
A major antidote for despair is engagement and participation: that is the key message of this collection of leading thinkers and doers hard at work on the dire problem of worldwide ecological decline. What creative responses to the crisis of our time await beyond weary save-the-world technologism, activism, and heroism? What can you do, today, to help? Find out here.
Craig Chalquist, co-editor of Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind and core faculty member at John F. Kennedy University
Hope Beneath Our Feet is the tonic needed right now in the world to inspire the many of us who care about preserving our earth but wonder if humankind can actually get it together. The chorus of voices in this book gives us much hope that we can. Read this book and learn why, and then help bring it into being by taking action beneath your feet.
David Gershon, author of Social Change 2.0: A Blueprint for Reinventing Our World and Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds
We are learning to see and hear a new kind of beauty. That beauty is in the clear and urgent prose of this book.
Coleman Barks, author of The Essential Rumi and The Book of Love
This book presents a rich lode of psychological resilience for those who suffer from a depletion of ecological optimism. The authors of this uplifting compendium embody the hope and wisdom that flows from rootedness.
Richard Heinberg, senior fellow, Post Carbon Institute
Practical inspiration intertwined with authentic hope, written by people living inspiring and authentically hopeful lives and transforming the world. Read it and join the transformation.
David W. Orr, author of Down to the Wire and Hope Is an Imperative: The Essential David Orr
Luscious, grounding, and disturbing, this book offers potent medicine for all those working for change, and a swift kick in the ass for those who arent. A bracing, polyphonic bundle of necessary voices.
David Abram, author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology
The greatest opportunity of our time is to reverse climate change and restore the sustainability of planet earth. This book offers a timely, relevant, and compelling invitation to action; it is an extraordinary anthology that contains diverse and practical ways in which we can individually and collectively change the world in positive and tangible ways for the generations of the future.
Angeles Arrien, PhD, author of The Four-Fold Way and The Second Half of Life
My kind of anthology! This volume bravely captures the seriousness as well as the optimism of this blessed moment.
Pramod Parajuli, PhD, graduate faculty and director, Prescott College
Copyright 2010 by Martin Keogh. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.
Published by
North Atlantic Books
P.O. Box 12327
Berkeley, California 94712
Cover design Ayelet Maida, A/M Studios
Cover images Eric Issele (fish), Pavel Lebedinsky (bee) / iStockphoto.com
This is issue number 67 in the Io series.
Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.
North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.
Copyright acknowledgments are listed on . Every effort was made to contact the holders of copyright to material reprinted in this book.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hope beneath our feet : restoring our place in the natural world : an anthology /
edited by Martin Keogh.
p. cm.
Summary: Hope Beneath Our Feet is an anthology of essays that answer the
question, If we are facing imminent environmental catastrophe, how do I live my
life right now? Provided by publisher.
eISBN: 978-1-58394-403-5
1. Sustainable living. 2. Environmentalism. I. Keogh, Martin J., 1958
GE196.H67 2010
304.2dc22
2010014998
v3.1
Contents
Introduction
MARTIN KEOGH
S ometimes bumping into a single piece of information can wake a person up to the plight of our world. This awareness came to me a few months after my son Dylan was born. In the warm comfort of our living room on a New England winter evening, I sat reading statistics on the decline of the worlds coral reefs. Glancing over at the face of my infant son as he slept in his mothers arms, I imagined the world that he is to inherit. Those dying reefs suddenly did not feel far awayor so far in the future.
I was stunned to learn that, while estimates differ, in a few decadesor maybe even less timethe coral reefs could be virtually gone. Coral reefs are a life-support system not only for themselves and countless fish species, but also for the three hundred million people whose sustenance depends on the seafood harvested in these waters. We will not only have to cope with the loss of an entire habitat teeming with lifewe will be staring right in the face of a global food-source collapse.