We live inside a nautilus of prayer--if only we open our senses and perceive what is infused all around. Throughout millennia and across the monotheistic religions, the natural was often revered as a sacred text. By the Middle Ages, this text was given a name, "The Book of Nature," the first, best entry point for encounter with the divine. The very act of "reading" the world, of focusing our attention on each twinkling star and unfurling blossom,...

"Since the beginning of time, humankind has looked upon nature and seen the divine. In the writings of the great thinkers across religions, the natural world inspires everything from fear, to awe, to tranquil contemplation; God, or however one defined the sublime, was present in everything. Yet today, even as we admire a tree or take in a striking landscape, we rarely see nature as sacred. In this short but deeply powerful book, the best-selling historian...

An illustrated version of the well-known hymn, which describes the marvels of God's creation.

"The widespread confusion of Nature with God and "natural" with holy has far-reaching negative consequences, from misinformation about everyday food and health choices to mistaken justifications of sexism, racism, and flawed economic policies"-- Many people love what's "natural": they say it is the best way to eat, to parent, even to act-- naturally, just as nature intended. Levinovitz demonstrates that "natural goodness" is not objective or scientific....

Provides a basic understanding of Buddhism including some of the key methods which Buddhist practitioners use to cultivate compassion and wisdom in their lives.

For millennia, plant and animal species have received little sustained attention as subjects of Christian theology and ethics in their own right. Focused on the human dilemma of sin and redemptive grace, theology has considered the doctrine of creation to be mainly an overture to the main drama of humanity's relationship to God. What value does the natural world have within the framework of religious belief? The crisis of biodiversity in our day,...

Esther Emery gives an honest, piercingly poetic account of a year without Internet - 365 days away from the good, the bad, and the ugly of our digital lives - in one woman's desperate attempt at a reset. Emery faces her addiction to electronica, her illusion of self-importance, and her longing to return to simpler days, but then the unexpected happens. Her experiment in analog is hijacked by a spiritual awakening, and she finds herself suddenly, inexplicably...