BOOK EXCERPT
In The Great Healing – Five Compassions That Can Save Our World, activist, author, screenwriter and feature filmmaker Stephen Erickson identifies our Arch-Villain, the main cause of global warming which now threatens to bring about the end of our Anthropocene Epoch — of us and virtually every multicellular life form. He also reveals our singular solution.
Five Compassions are our path to that solution.
Look out
I hope I was a good lookout on my watch.
I wanted to introduce you to exquisite creatures and their stories. Immersed in our daily mob scenes, utilizing tools, skillsets, and talents uniquely our own, each one of us is an exquisite creature. I hope you fully realize that.
I spotted a snake and I’ve alerted you. A Cape cobra directly ahead of us is set to strike. Each of you are now aware of the threat and its severity. We have to face our Cape cobra. Right now.
Imagine how potent our collective power, rising, resolved and taking action together can be. Realize how much you can contribute to it, and will benefit from it.
Now is the time.
Joanna Macy writes in World as Lover, World as Self, that the task of “restoring our ravaged Earth… not only puts us in league with the stones and the beasts, but also in league with the beings of the future. All that we do to mend our planet is for their sake, too. Their chance to live and love our world depends in large measure on us and our uncertain efforts.”2
As lookout, I can report one other thing with certainty:
It’s all about compassion…
Excerpt from The Great Healing – Five Compassions That Can Save Our World by Stephen Erickson. Published by TGH Press, August 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Stephen Erickson. All rights reserved.
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Stephen Erickson is an author and a dedicated environmental and animal activist for 30 years. He is also a screenwriter, feature filmmaker, and former Home Entertainment executive. He lives in Los Angeles and has 3 children. The Great Healing – Five Compassions That Can Save Our World is his first book.
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1 © Tratong/Shutterstock
2 Reprinted from World As Lover, World As Self (1991, 2007) by Joanna Macy with permission of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, www.parallax.org pg. 191