""This book explores what is happening to the human spirit in a culture shaped and driven by [globalization], a culture where dreams, imaginations and desires are all manipulated...." What do we really want? Noted theologian Mary Grey believes we have gotten out of touch with our deepest desires and that the root problem is our acquiescence in global capitalism's most problematic characteristics. Story and symbol, she argues, can put us back in touch with out "sacred longings." Focusing on such simple yet profound symbols as water, light, and sacred space, she tries to reinstill a spiritual quest. In the end, she envisions spirituality--a kind of ecomystical renewal--as an element in the transformation of desire, lived out in Christian community. "For desire to be reborn, for sacred longings even to be named, not to mention fulfilled, there needs to be an embracing of the way of renunciation, simplicity and sacrifice. And that is counter-cultural..." As Part One looks at how our culture has lost heart, and Part Two analyzes are restless hearts, Part Three asks us to take heart and rekindle our thirst for righteousness.

Ecospirituality, for the first time, comprehensively introduces and lays the foundation for further individual growth in the burgeoning field of ecospirituality. Rachel Wheeler covers the background for environmentally oriented spirituality in the Christian tradition, beginning with expressions of creation care and creation degradation in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, and moving through important moments and figures in the history of Christian spirituality. With this foundation in place, she reveals how expressions of renewed interest in creation care are showing up amid our compromised living habitats today, and shows what ideas laid the groundwork for beginning to speak of God, human identity, and human responsibility in certain ways. Turning to ecospiritual practice, Wheeler presents specific practices from a variety of global religious traditions, paying particular attention to Indigenous spiritual traditions. She also explores interdisciplinary areas that have combined some essential aspects of their own focus of engagement with ecology and, furthermore, with ecospirituality. Such areas as ecojustice, ecofeminism, ecowomanism, and ecopoetics all provide points of contact with the work that ecospirituality makes possible and have important implications for personal and social transformation. Wheeler's concise introduction to ecospirituality is not only a foundation-laying tool for educators, but also a concise, thorough way for individuals and students to gain a comprehensive understanding of ecospirituality and why it matters.

Explores the philosophy, science, and spirituality of nature mysticism and its Green calling • Offers a solid bridge between spiritual practice and environmental activism • Reveals how we can heal the environment by renewing our connection to it • Shows how spiritual encounters in nature are healing the Nature Deficit Disorder of our psyches and bodies Many have been struck by a majestic moment in nature--a sole illuminated flower in a shady grove, an owl swooping silently across a wooded path, or an infinitely starry sky--and found themselves in a state of expanded awareness so profound they can feel the interconnectedness of all life. These trance-like moments of clarity, unity, and wonder often incite a call to protect and preserve the earth--to support Nature as she supports us. Termed “nature mysticism,” people from all cultures have described such experiences. However, the ever-increasing urbanization of the world’s population is threatening this ancient connection as well as the earth itself. In Ecomysticism, Carl von Essen explores nature mysticism through the recorded experiences of outdoor enthusiasts as well as scientific studies in biology, psychology, and neuroscience. Citing consciousness scholar William James and a variety of well-known nature lovers such as Ansel Adams, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, von Essen shows how the spiritual transcendence from an encounter in nature--like other mystical experiences--is healing the Nature Deficit Disorder of our psyches and bodies, leading to an expansion of our worldview and a clearer understanding of our self and of our natural world. Offering a solid bridge between spiritual practice and environmental activism, von Essen’s spiritual ecology reveals how only through a renewal of humanity’s spiritual connection to nature can we effect true environmental healing.

American ecopoetries of migration explore the conflicted relationships of mobile subjects to the nonhuman world and thus offer valuable environmental insight for our current age of mass mobility and global ecological crisis. In Ecopoetic Place-Making, Judith Rauscher analyzes the works of five contemporary American poets of migration, drawing from ecocriticism and mobility studies. The poets discussed in her study challenge exclusionary notions of place-attachment and engage in ecopoetic place-making from different perspectives of mobility, testifying to the potential of poetry as a means of conceptualizing alternative environmental imaginaries for our contemporary world on the move.

Narrated by a far-future historian, Peter Jensen leaves an account of the world from the 1990s to the opening of the 23rd century as a gift to his granddaughter. A combination of fiction and scholarship, this third edition of Wagar's speculative history of the future alternates between descriptions of world events and intimate glimpses of this historian's family into the first centuries of the new millennium.

Health Humanities in contemporary times has enabled exploration of the unexplored chartered terrains in literary paradigms. Scholars in the field of Humanities and Sciences have been engaging with the praxis of applying concepts from both disciplines revising the approach towards Health Care and Humanities. Due to interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary methodologies of reading literary texts, they have been reinforcing a paradigm shift from the conventional understanding of narratives in Literature and Health Care. Traditional discursive boundaries between the disciplines of Health and Humanities are collapsing due to a comprehensive and nuanced interpretation of the shared ontological foundation between the two – Humanism. Terminologies like Displacement, Dislocation, and Disjunction unite Health and Humanities and they also make the unknown, known. Health Humanities explores the different multitudes of narration in the literary arena and it represents diverse voices of literature. It also showcases the importance of re-reading a text owing to its autotelic status. The authors who have contributed chapters for this book have meticulously selected diverse texts and contexts, embedded in the dynamism of Health Humanities. This book is an impetus for academicians from the field of Humanities and Sciences who desire to venture into new epistemes towards Health Humanities.

This work represents Murray Bookchin's riposte to the antihumanism, mysticism and antirationalism which are influencing many people's attitudes to environmental problems. Bookchin offers a critique of, among others, social Darwinists, deep ecologists, new agers, technophobes, Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard.

The United States is suffering its greatest upheaval since the Civil War—politically, economically, socially, religiously. With elegant, sweeping vision, Gus diZerega explores the complex causes leading us to this point, comparing them to giant fault lines that, when they erupt, create enormous disturbance and in time new landscapes. He traces the disruption, first, to America's first countercultural movement originating in the antebellum South and coming into later conflict with the "counterculture" of the 60s that continues now in phenomena like Burning Man; and second, to the crumbling of the moral foundation birthed by the Enlightenment, leading to today’s nihilism. But within the loss resides hope: diZerega sees promise of a new society based more in equality, sacred feminine values, and spiritual immanence. Whether the prevailing oligarchy will abort this transformation is the question of our time. This book enables those of us now living through it to understand the powerful forces shaping our lives and calling on us for a response.