WILLIAM HENRY SEARLE
LUNGS OF MY EARTH
A Personal Ecology
What does it feel like to be a part of the living, breathing earth? And how do these experiences contribute to the sense that the earth is sacred, holy? In prose that is at once lyrical and vividly profound, the author intimately recounts – from childhood to the present day – his experiences of being carnally drawn into the life of the earth through six particular landscapes that open out towards the ineffable, the sacred, which does not gleam beyond the earth’s horizon but beats, from within, the very heart of life.
“In a breathless torrent of vivid impressions–most strikingly those of touch and feel–William Henry Searle ignites our own senses, brings us to life. Those of us, like me, who glibly speak of the living Earth as our larger body, are jolted awake to a wilder, more awesome reality.”
—Joanna Macy, author of Coming Back to Life
“William Searle’s book, Lungs of My Earth, is an inspiring and heart-​​warming read. The author has been able to weave together a sense of the sacred with a sense of the place. Here in this book the love for the landscape meets the imagination of the intellect. The resulting prose is a beautiful narrative. It is a pilgrimage through life as well as through the land.”
—Satish Kumar, founder and director of Schumacher College, editor of Reurgence Magazine
“Lungs of My Earth evokes particular places dear to the author, sweeping them into our imaginations with a rush of delighted language to create ‘a luminous map of the sacred’. Part field-​​work and part sky-​​dreaming, it is at once exact and exultant—a vibrant song to the earth and echo chamber of the earth’s own singing.”
—Sir Andrew Motion, UK Poet Laureate, 1999–2009, President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England