Sacred Earth Rising Within

Part memoir, part lyrical essays and poetry, Sacred Earth Rising Within is a turn toward life in a precarious time, and carries a powerful message of hope for the human prospect. It begins with the author's early experiences as a minister's son, and the life-changing impact of the kidnapping and attempted murder of his sister when she was eight and he was seven years old. This early trauma thrust the author into a state of spiritual rupture and a subsequent journey back toward wholeness. 

The author draws striking parallels between this personal trauma and the larger collective trauma of our culture's severance from the natural world. He extends this as well to the traumatic aspects of our lack of grounding in a larger unifying story. In so doing, he raises deeper questions about what it means to be human: How does connection with nature help overcome early trauma in individuals and societies? What is the healing power of a life-giving cosmology (a comprehensive origins story) that brings us back to meaning and a sense of belonging to the universe? 

Weaving poetic landscape interludes with narrative non-fiction and poetry, the author presents a new hybrid genre that speaks to the heart, mind, and spirit of the human within the context of a creative cosmos. The result offers a profoundly healing narrative for our time, one that is both personal and universal. Sacred Earth Rising Within has been identified as a work that falls within the emerging genre of autocosmology.