A Book for Earth Day

While I recommend that everyone "just get out there" today and connect with Nature, here's a recent addition to my bookshelf that is worthy of note, today of all days.
If you get a chance, read it.

The term "secular enchantment" really resonates with me, as I have always believed that our capacity to be in awe of the natural world is something deeply spiritual, older than religion ... and probably a lot saner.

So read this to dispel misconceptions about Darwin and Darwinism, and to take a wonderful journey back to your own "origins" of wonder, that capacity you had as a child to take delight in the world around you. After reading this, you realize that Darwin never lost it.

A Few Good Words

There is a passage in the famous preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass that I read every now and then, usually at the beginning of each new year. While I realize that we're already well into 2010, coming across these words the other day prompted me to post them.

Over the years this passage has become both creed and mantra for me, so these are good words to share. Across time, Whitman is calling upon each and every one of us, not just poets, to rise up to the challenge of being the very best we can be—compassionate, loving, wise and open-minded.

This is what you shall do:

Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . . .