Sacred Nature: How we can recover our bond with the natural world

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An urgent manifesto and a practical guide on how to change our relationship with nature, by one of the world's leading writers on religion and spirituality 'KAREN ARMSTRONG IS A GENIUS' A.N. Wilson In this hugely powerful book, Karen Armstrong argues that if we want to avert environmental catastrophe, it is not enough to change our behaviour- we need to learn to think and feel differently about the natural world - to rekindle our spiritual bond with nature. For most of human history, and in almost all the world's cultures, nature was believed to be sacred, and our God or gods to be present everywhere in the natural world. When people in the West began to separate God and nature in modern times, it was not just a profound breach with thousands of years of accumulated wisdom- it also set in train the destruction of the natural world. Taking themes that have been central to the world's religious traditions - from gratitude and compassion to sacrifice and non-violence - Armstrong offers practical steps to help us develop a new mindset to reconnect with nature and rekindle our sense of the sacred. Sacred Nature reveals the most profound connections between humans and the natural world. It speaks to anyone interested in our relationship with nature, worried about the destruction of our environment, and searching for new ways of thinking to shape the action needed to save our planet. 'One of our best living writers on religion' Financial Times 'Karen Armstrong is one of the handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion' Alain de Botton

Reviews

A rich and subtle exploration of the sacredness of nature, filled with a timeless wisdom and deep humanity ... Much has been written on the scientific and technological aspects of climate change ... But Armstrong's book is both more personal and more profound. Its urgent message is that hearts and minds need to change if we are to once more learn to revere our beautiful and fragile planet * Guardian, Book of the Day *
Karen Armstrong is one of the handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion
Warm and witty ... [Armstrong's] ability to summon up examples and quotations...is humbling... Sacred Nature [is] a challenge to think differently in the face of climate change, to recover ways of looking at things, including God * Tablet *
An accessible account of how a wider religious perspective might contribute to humans' adopting a more solicitous attitude to nature -- Rowan Williams * New Statesman *
A passionate book ... We must change our understanding of nature, this puzzling category we find outselves at liberty to exploit. Happily, there are resources in many religious traditions that can help us * Times Literary Supplement *

Author Bio

Karen Armstrong is one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs. She spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun but left her teaching order in 1969 to read English at St Anne's College, Oxford. In 1982, she became a full-time writer and broadcaster. She is the author of sixteen books and has been awarded with honours and prizes across the globe, including the British Academy's inaugural Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for improving transcultural understanding in 2013.