Description:
Brian Drayton intersperse evocative vignettes from the natural world with penetrating scientific and social insights, framed within a gospel concern for the natural world and Quaker-based guidance for a way forward.
Brief description: With training in plant conservation biology, Brian Drayton's work has concentrated in research on science pedagogy, climate change education, and learning and discourse in educational communities of practice. He is a member and a recorded minister in New England Yearly Meeting of Friends. Brian has traveled widely in the ministry; he has also given addresses, retreats, and workshops on Friends history and spirituality. His writings include Messages to Meetings (2019) On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry, (2nd edition 2019), and, with William P. Taber, Jr., A Language for the Inward Landscape: Spiritual Wisdom from the Quaker Movement (2015). He blogs at amorvincat. wordpress.com. Brian and Darcy Drayton worship with Wellesley (Massachusetts) Friends Meeting.
Review Quotes:
As the world becomes more complex, uncertain, and challenging by the day, a curious thing seems to happen simultaneously: a kind of intensification, simplification, and clarification. But it doesn't just happen, and it doesn't happen to everyone. It happens to those awake enough and willing to keep looking, slowly and carefully, at the whole/holy mess we're in (even as it is still possible to fall in love with toads and ravens). This book is borne from one who seeks, observes, tastes, and listens, one who does not look away, one who reckons with our pressing realities at the scientific, pragmatic, emotional, and spiritual level. As you read, you will walk with him through New England landscapes, discovering beauty and devastation all over again, and suddenly you will find yourself in observant reflection and deep conversation.
Susanne Moser, founder of The Adaptive Mind Project
Brian Drayton's eloquent letters intersperse evocative vignettes from the natural world with penetrating scientific and social insights, framed within a gospel concern for the natural world and Quaker-based guidance for a way forward through this dire Anthropocene era. Given the bearing of both Christian and scientific worldviews upon our present dilemmas, Drayton's synthesis is crucial to a whole vision for the future.
Douglas Gwyn, author of The Covenant Crucified: Quakers and the Rise of Capitalism
This is a beautiful book-not to be read at a sitting but to be dipped into, like a flowing stream, as one works toward a full and useful life.
Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature