Recently in Books Category

When I first became a Pagan I thought that we were primarily a new/old religious perspective that would better integrate human beings with the world and feminine values.  I still think that, but just what that means has continued to deepen. I have learned, and am continuing to learn, that I did not really understand what that meant.

I've just finished Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce's  new book, Wild Justice: the Moral Lives of Animals.  Theirs is a wonderful book that in less than 200 pages has deeply changed how I look at our other-than-human neighbors on our planet.  It has moved me still further from the sociopathic assumptions that increasingly define modern attitudes.  It also has important connections to many themes I've discussed on this blog.

Last week I went with a Pagan friend to the Marin Interfaith Council's meeting, to hear Barbara McGraw give a talk on church and state in America.  McGraw is author of Rediscovering America's Sacred Ground,  a very good discussion of how our Founders anticipated relations should be between church and state. California's spiritual diversity was well represented by the people who turned out to hear her.  Along with Pagans, at least the Catholic, Presbyterian, Jewish, Bahai. Episcopal, Zen Buddhist, Brahama Kumari, Taoist, Unitarian, UCC, and Sufi traditions were all represented.  

When I first was made to know, in no uncertain terms, that the earth and everything in it was vastly more sentient than I had ever imagined, I looked long and hard for writings that could shed more light on my experiences.  Especially I looked for stuff by modern Westerners.

Mostly I found little.  Most of us Westerners have not so immersed ourselves into natural processes and rhythms as to encounter this aspect of reality very often, and those who have rarely write books. David Abram,  Jeremy Narby  and Tom Harmer  helped me significantly, but did little to reconnect this reality with the modern world around me.

So I was delighted when I discovered Derrick Jensen and his book  A Language Older then Words.  He  really captured what I was experiencing. 

The recent plethora of books by militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens is beginning to generate a good deal of return fire from people writing within the Christian tradition, either as sophisticated adherents or writers recognizing that on balance our society benefited from it rather more than it lost.  Christopher Hedges' I Don't Believe in Atheists  is a wonderful take down of Sam Harris in particular and a powerful argument that the militant atheists are replicating much that they find most objectionable in the religious traditions they deplore.  I was recently sent a review of two other recent books Terry Eagleton's Reason, Faith and Revolution,   and David Bentley Hart's Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies.  in Nathan Schneider's essay "Reclaiming Religion"   in the American Prospect.  

I think we NeoPagans have something of value to add to this debate about the social value of religion. (This is a mini-essay)

Anne Hill has a good review of a worthy new Pagan book that helps us find grounds for good living that are not rooted in someone else's commandment:, The Other Side of Virtue, by Brendan Myers. http://gnosiscafe.com/gcblog/2009/04/30/living-la-vida-virtuosa/  Check it out,...

Joyce and River Higgenbotham have written a new book, ChristoPaganism,  that I think will interest any Pagan concerned with the broader boundaries of our community, or any Christian interested in the long-term compatibility of Pagan and Christian spirituality....

For Pagan bookworms, if you do not have Sabina Magliocco's Neo-Pagan Sacred Art & Altars: Making Things Whole, it is now available at a super sale  by her publisher, the University of Mississippi Press.  Normally $50, it is now $15...

Trying to integrate spirituality and politics as this blog attempts gets frustrating.  Real frustrating.  Politics is a little context compared to spirit, but it can so easily come to dominate our attention.It's sort of like when I hit my thumb...

Nature poetry is important in helping us reconnect with the living earth, an experience even some Pagans have not personally experienced (yet). National Poetry Month is a fine time to reflect on this, and share some poems.   Our society...

It is National Poetry Month and some have suggested I offer my favorite poem on this blog.  I have a small number of favorite poems, and a strong preference for a particular type of poem, ones that meld us with...

While I suspect Iowa's Supreme Court ruling went well beyond the current moral capacities of many of that state's citizens, their unanimous ruling establishing the right of gay marriage is a wonderful one.  And as usual, the culture warriors are...

I have just finished Linda Hogan's Dwellings.  Hers is not a new book.  It appeared in 1995, and I missed it then. I have been the poorer for my oversight.  I stumbled across it in a bookstore -and picked it...

Pagans stand in an interesting relationship to Christians and Secularists.  Because we focus on the Sacred as it manifests in the world, we do not have the problems with science and knowledge of the world that the Christian Church has...

This morning a friend of mine in Denmark wrote asking me what I thought of an article titled 'Wicca Infiltrates the Churches,' by Catherine Edwards.  Its author is quite alarmed at what she sees as unchristian influences seeking to undermine...

Jason Pitzi-Waters at the wonderful Wild Hunt Blog interviews me about issues raised in Beyond the Burning Times, a book of Pagan-Christian dialogue jointly written by m'self and Philip Johnson, an Australian Evangelical.  He will soon have an interview with...

Who then would have guessed George Orwell's predictions in his novel 1984 might simply have been premature?  One of the novel's most memorable features was depicting the endless stream of lies the government used to manipulate the people and justify...

   Although apparently not yet available here in the Sates, Beyond the Burning Times (Lion Hudson, 2008) is now out.  The few reviews I have seen, both Pagan and Christian, suggest our book is living up to our hopes: to...

While Huckabee and Romney are teaching religious bigotry, a more painful but also more hopeful story emerged from New York City, where some of their spiritual students attempted putting their attitudes into practice. Walter Adler was with his girlfriend...

For many of us who are deeply concerned with environmental issues the most frustrating part of our struggle is that while public opinion is largely in our favor, the modern world's basic institutions are biased against us. They dance...

Politically, perhaps the most important talk given at Pop!tech was Juan Enriquez on "Transformation in Power Systems." Enriquez is a businessman, academician, and best selling author. Curently he is chairman and CEO of Biotechonomy, a company researching and assisting...

UPDATES BELOW. A California friend sent me the following post by Don Boudreaux, chair of the Dept. of Economics at Virginia's George Mason University. Boudreaux had sent it to the Washington Times, apparently in response to an editorial. Cool reception...

I have been re-reading Jordan Paper's The Deities Are Many: A Polytheistic Theology while working on a new book of my own, and am again impressed with what a wonderful book he has written. It is even better the second...

This blog has been silent most of the summer, largely due to my having been on a long road trip up into northern Ontario, then to California to give some papers on emergent order, followed by teaching a workshop in...