T. C. McLuhan has written three books on Native North American life, including the bestselling Touch the Earth. She is an award-winning feature filmmaker whose works include The Shadow Catcher and The Third Walker. She has been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University and resides in New York City.
In this ambitious and well-done collection of the resources of six different cultures, McLuhan has fashioned a cross-cultural gem which shines as a beacon in the night for all genuine explorers of the human spirit and the bounties of the sacred Earth. With intellectual flare and great stamina, the author maps the way of nature in:
• Aboriginal Australia
• Japan
• Greece
• Africa
• South America: The Kogi
• Native North America
McLuhan finds in these cultures a respect for the energy and the mystery of the universe and for the diversity of creation in the mix of animals, plants, minerals, soil, and humans. She quotes Gregory Bateson who once quipped that there is a pattern that "connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all four of them to me." In the introduction, she probes some of the commonalties she found in these six cultures including the primacy of earth, the links between land and self, the umbilical connection to the soul, mountains and the human spirit, and the way of the labyrinth.
The adventuresome reader will find a playground for the spirit and a keener appreciation for the natural world in chapters on sacred Aboriginal sites in Australia; the Law of Oneness in Japanese thought; the shades of light in Greece; the power of green in Africa; the belief of the Kogi in South America that the damage to the Earth could bring an end to life on Earth; and the prayer of ceremony in Native North America. McLuhan ends this encyclopedic paperback with a Lakota prayer:
"Grandfather Great Spirit
Fill us with the Light.
Give us the strength to understand, and the eyes to see.
Teach us to walk the soft Earth as relatives to all that live."
