On Being an Earth Being: Searching for the Spiritual in a Cosmic Sanctuary Called Planet Earth
Ebook
Overview
What happens when you discover you are an Earth being and not just a human being? This volume traces my journey from being a child of Mother Church to being a child of Mother Earth, from being a human being cursed with original sin to being an Earth being blessed with innate spirituality. My journey includes probing the maze of mysteries called ecology, attending the Wisdom School of the ancient world, taking a cosmic journey with the traumatized Job, joining Aboriginal peoples of Australia in reading the spiritual landscape, and celebrating life in a cosmic sanctuary called Earth. These reflections are suitable not only for personal meditation, but for readings in worship contexts and for spirituality retreats or workshops.
“When someone has spent more than eight decades immersed in the
Judeo-Christian Bible, one might expect that the bubble called ‘the
world of the Bible’ to contain a person. Not Norm Habel. Habel has
seen beyond the time of sacred writing to the traces of a more
ancient wisdom. Sure, traces of that wisdom have survived in the
treasures held in the Bible, and Habel has spent the more recent
years of his indefatigable search prizing them out. But Habel has
caught a glimpse of that ancient wisdom in indigenous spirituality,
stories, and rituals. Far from mining them for his own enrichment,
he has sat humbly before their custodians seeking from them how he
might recover . . . himself, an Earth Being. Gone is the cultured,
academic discourse of the past; now come the gentle meditations,
the tentative wonder of a return home, the anxious reflections on
how past and present, Christian and Earth Being, might celebrate
life together.”
—Alan Cadwallader, Centre for Public and Contextual Theology,
Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia
Norman C. Habel is a Professorial Fellow at Flinders University.
He is a biblical scholar who has specialized in the book of Job and
wisdom literature. His initiatives include The Earth Bible
Series, The Season of Creation, and Exploring
Ecological Hermeneutics. He worked with the Aboriginal Rainbow
Spirit elders in Queensland to produce Rainbow Spirit Theology:
Towards an Australian Aboriginal Theology. His latest work,
entitled Acknowledgement of the Land and Faith of the Indigenous
Custodians after Following the Abraham Trail, is a challenge
for the churches of Australia.