The sacred universe

A leading scholar, cultural historian, and Catholic priest who spent more than fifty years writing about our engagement with the Earth, the author possessed prophetic insight into the rampant destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of species. In this book he makes a persuasive case for an interreligious dialogue that can better confront the environmental problems of the twenty-first century. These erudite and keenly sympathetic essays represent his best work, covering such issues as human beings' modern alienation from nature and the possibilities of future, regenerative forms of religious experience. Asking that we create a new story of the universe and the emergence of the Earth within it, the author resituates the human spirit within a sacred totality.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Spiritual. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.