My dream is to one day be a Czech parachutist or a Haitian human rights activist (per Sherm’s email ;)). In the meanwhile, though, I have followed my passion and my heart, and I have been richly rewarded. Not always the way I hoped. OK, basically never the way I hoped. But with lots of joy and beauty and magic on the one hand, and also lots of pain and heartbreak and more magic on the other.

I’ve spent a good portion of the last twelve years researching and writing a book, and have been richly rewarded. It won the Grand Prize at the Nautilus Book Awards this year. Previous winners include the Dalai Lama, Barbara Kingsolver, and Thich Nhat Hanh.

Reclaiming the Sacred is a vital asset for anyone concerned about the global climate disaster or the vast environmental destruction being caused by humans worldwide. This book explores the cultural and psychological underpinnings of the materialism that are driving much of this destruction.

The book explores the psychology of happiness--those factors that really do contribute to human well-being—far more than money and possessions—and it explores the psychology of money--the ways that money nonetheless hooks so many of us. It explores the immense costs of materialism, in particular global warming, and it points the way beyond materialism, toward healthy and integrated relationships with ourselves, each other, and nature.

But it’s also so much more than that—a deep dive into love and belonging and spirit. I highly recommend it! :)

Fodder for conversation: No more flying for me. Two intentional communities. Founding a community organization in response to the murder of an incarcerated mentally ill black man by corrections officers in a state prison very close to home. Vegan. Finding my birth mother when I was 38. A wonderful romance spanning four continents, then a 16-year marriage, and then a painful implosion and divorce. Two luminous children. The greenest USGBC building in New York state. A truck converted to run on vegetable oil. A lost hiker trekking solo in the Amazon. A high school teacher. School bus driver.