Susan Murphy is a writer, authorized Zen teacher, and filmmaker. We were very impressed with her book Upside-Down Zen where she makes the most of this tradition's amenability to mystery and its playfulness. She also is the writer and director of Breathing Under Water, an award-winning film. In this book, rather than delivering a sobering manifesto on our present-day ecological crisis, she gives us a medicine kit consisting of Zen koans, stories, and practices designed to enable us to see the big picture. It is the kind of creative approach we would expect from an inventive Zen teacher who wants to shift "consciousness back in the direction of wholeness."

Murphy encourages us not to lose heart in the face of global shortages and changes that disrupt people's lives. She hopes we can regain our humanity "in the course of fighting for a planet where our children's children can safely flourish." While large and greedy corporations do their thing, the small recycling steps that we take in our homes are often the best we can do. Keeping wonder alive in our private lives also helps us honor the earth. Murphy suggests we tap into the Big Story of the Universe as articulated by Thomas Berry. She also supports the idea of mending broken objects and tools rather than throwing them out. This is a spiritual idea that inanimate things will be able to get excited about!

Murphy ends with 14 koans adding commentary on each of them. She notes:

"Fresh access to a flexible, non-fixated, creative and playful state of mind, born as the whole earth and, like it, at home in an open-ended, unfinished universe — this is what every koan calls up.

"The fight for the restoration of a whole earth demands nothing less."