Credo

I believe in Love.

That is to say I believe we are all made up of the same stuff.  When I say all of us I mean all, everyone: human and not-human.  Human and more-than-human.  Shamans and tribal peoples have been saying this for thousands and thousands of years.  Particle physicists have announced it to be true recently, but few of us live as if we knew it to be true.

I believe that this 'same stuff' is, as much as it is anything else, The Divine.  I believe that within a constant cycle of life, death, life we continue as part of creator and created.  As do all things.

I believe that the primary place of our creating is in the telling of stories.  These stories have tremendous power, they carry magic; they affect not only ourselves and the way we view and respond to our earth but they affect the living land itself.  You only have to look at the way the science fiction of the past has become the inventions of the present to see how powerful we are.  Or look at the way the written word has persuaded us out of a reciprocal, interdependent, living, sentient world and into the disconnect of 'other'.

Human beings are proliferating at a huge rate.  On top of that the 'stories' of the West are holding more and more sway .  Stories like the one that says we are not part of a living, breathing, unified whole world but somehow separate.  Stories that say that profit for some (a very few) of the individuals is more important than a wholesome life for many of the people.  Stories that say that my needs are more important than yours; my desire for perfumed laundry or fizzy drinks or whatever is more important than your need for clean drinking water.

I believe that it is incredibly important that we change these stories.  If we do not, then as powerful as we are, we will bring about the destruction of what we call 'nature'.

If we're so powerful, I hear you ask, then why does this matter?  I believe that it matters because like a petulant toddler hurling his toys from his cot we will soon be left behind bars of our own making with no beauty to distract us from an infinity of existence in a world made barren by our selfishness.

So - with this in mind  -  I offer you a reading list. These are a small collection of books that I believe will help us start to change the stories we tell ourselves.  Books that could just save us all (an exquisite irony that you will understand if you have already read 'The Spell of The Sensuous').

If you are only ever to read one other book as long as you live, please make it this one;
'The Spell of The Sensuous' by David Abram.

'Snowy Tower' by Martin Shaw

'A Language Older Than Words' by Derrik Jensen

'Wild' by Jay Griffiths

I hope you enjoy them as much as I have, and if you have any recommendations back I'd love to receive them.