Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul: A Celtic Guide to Listening to Our Souls and Saving the World
Publisher,William Collins
Publication Date,
Format, Hardcover
Weight, 380 g
No. of Pages, 288
A leading spiritual teacher reveals how Celtic spirituality -listening to the sacred around us and inside us – can help us heal the earth, overcome our conflicts, and reconnect with ourselves.
John Philip Newell shares the long hidden tradition of Celtic Christianity, explaining how this earth – based spirituality can help us rediscover the natural rhythms of life and deepen our spiritual connection with God, with each other, and with the earth. Newell introduces some of Celtic Christianity’s leading practitioners, both saints and pioneers of faith, whose timeless wisdom is more necessary than ever, including:
Pelagius, who shows us how to look beyond sin to affirm our sacredness as part of all God’s creation, and courageously stands up for our principles in the face of oppression.
Brigid of Kildare, who illuminates the interrelationship of all things and reminds us of the power of the sacred feminine to overcome those seeking to control us.
John Muir, who encourages us to see the holiness and beauty of wilderness and what we must do to protect these gifts.
Teilhard de Chardin, who inspires us to see how science, faith, and our future tell one universal story that beings with sacredness.
By embracing the wisdom of Celtic Christianity, we can learn how to listen to the sacred in nature and within one another, but our culture – at the times even our faiths – have made us forget what each of us already know deep in our souls but have learned to surpress. Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul offers a new spiritual foundation for our lives, once centered on encouragement, guidance, and hope for creating a better world.
John Philip Newell (born 1953) is a Celtic teacher and author of spirituality who calls the modern world to reawaken to the sacredness of the earth and every human being.
Canadian by birth, and a citizen also of Scotland, he resides with his family in Edinburgh and works on both sides of the Atlantic. In 2016 he began the School of Earth and Soul (originally called the School of Celtic Consciousness) and teaches regularly in the United States and Canada as well as leading international pilgrimage weeks on Iona in the Western Isles of Scotland.
His PhD is from the University of Edinburgh and he has authored over fifteen books, including A New Ancient Harmony, Sounds of the Eternal, The Rebirthing of God, and his major latest publication Sacred Earth Sacred Soul.
Newell speaks of himself as ‘a wandering teacher’ following the ancient path of many lone teachers before him in the Celtic world, ‘wandering Scots’ (or scotus vagans as they were called) seeking the wellbeing of the world. He has been described as having ‘the heart of a Celtic bard and the mind of a Celtic scholar’, combining in his teachings the poetic and the intellectual, the head as well as the heart, and spiritual awareness as well as political and ecological concern. His writings have been translated into seven languages. In 2020 he relinquished his ordination as a minister of the Church of Scotland as no longer reflecting the heart of his belief in the sacredness of the earth and every human being. He continues, however, to see himself as ‘a grateful son of the Christian household’ seeking to be in relationship with the wisdom of humanity’s other great spiritual traditions.
- Dimensions : 5.55 x 1.1 x 8.74 inches