Earth Calling: A Climate Change Handbook for the 21st Century (Sacred Activism)

Our earliest mythologies tell us we all start as a little bit of dirt. These stories carry a profound message: each of us is born with a deep and abiding connection to the earth, one that many of us have lost touch with. The Silent Spring for today’s environmental activists, this book offers an invitation to reestablish our relationship with nature to repair our damaged environment. Chapter 1 examines the threats to the planet’s health through the lens of the human energy system known as the chakras, describing how the broken first chakra relates to our disconnection from our biosphere. Chapter 2 shows how our current environmental crises–global warming, climate change, dwindling water resources, natural disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes–represent severe manifestations of our disconnection from the earth. Chapter 3 describes how the preponderance of oil in our culture–especially agribusiness–compounds this disconnection, from our dependence on other countries for our energy, to current issues of oil depletion, peak oil, and fracking, to the dumbing down of our agricultural polyculture. Chapter 4 explains how the most basic building blocks of our nourishment–seeds–are being compromised with a loss of biodiversity and rise of GMOs, and how that adversely affects the farmers whose sacred connection to the land has in many cases been severed. Chapter 5 describes the ways in which we as individuals can begin to wake up to climate activism as a spiritual practice. This chapter includes specific activities that you can use to implement change and heal your own connection to the earth. By learning and practicing ritual and understanding the earth’s rhythms and seasonal rites of passage, each of us can find unique ways to heal our own connections and help others heal theirs. Chapter 6 brings to life Goethe’s wisdom: “Knowing isn’t enough; neither is being willing. We must do,” by providing strategies and resources for exploring how each of us can find our own Earth Calling, then anchoring that calling with the only force that ignites change: Action. ELLEN GUNTER is a climate activist who lectures, delivers Al Gore’s slideshow on climate change, and writes about the connections between spirituality and the environment. TED CARTER has been designing earth-centric landscapes along the northeast coast for more than thirty years. His award-winning work has been featured in local and national publications. The authors live in Oak Park, IL/Buxton, ME