"We are living through a period of spiritual searching and renewal on many parts of the planet," notes Charlene Spretnak in States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. One reason for this renewal is that more and more people are realizing that the cult of modernism with its tools of value-free science and technological progress has mucked up the planet. In addition, the philosophy of individualism has eroded our sense of community and muted the ideals of social activism.
Spretnak believes that the core teachings and practices of the great wisdom traditions of Buddhism, Native American spirituality, Goddess spirituality, and the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam "yield a paradigm of resistance, creativity and profound renewal for our time."
With an authoritative boldness, the author mines the meanings in these traditions. In Buddhism, the process of purifying the mind and cultivating compassion can go a long way towards healing the wounds brought on by a competitive consumer society. The ecological wisdom of Native American spirituality can serve as an antidote to the domineering relationship with nature established as a standard operating procedure in the modern world.
Spretnak finds in Goddess spirituality a heartfelt care for the personal, familiar, and communal dimensions of our life together. And in the Abrahamic cluster of religions, the emphasis on social justice and the common good is wisely accentuated.
The recovery of meaning in the postmodern age is possible if we begin to live out these core spiritual teachings. Spretnak believes they can lead "from mental anguish to inner balance, from debilitating exile to the embrace of Earth community, from denial of the body to the ecology of the erotic, and from dread or indifference toward 'the other' to active love." States of Graceis a watershed work which illuminates the forces of spiritual renewal afoot in our time.
