Earth Spirit Of Place

"Featuring the photographs of Chris Hadfield."

All of Earth’s life is interconnected and sacred. An awareness of that sacred relationship opens a direct path to spiritual understanding. These powerful techniques join mind, will, spirit, and intuition to the plants, animals, and minerals sharing our world, aligning the practitioner in a deeper relationship with life’s sacred matrix.

Built environment surrounds us for 90% of our lives but only now are we realising its influence on the environment, our health, and how we think, feel and behave both individually and socially. Spirit & Place shows how to work towards a sustainable environment through socially inclusive processes of placemaking, and how to create places that are nourishing psychologically and physically, to soul and spirit as well as body. This book's unique arguments identify important, but often unrecognised, principles and illustrate their applicability in a wide range of situations, price-ranges and climates. It shows how to reconcile the apparently incompatible demands of environmental, economic and social sustainability; how to moderate climate to make places of delight, and realign social pressures so places both support society and maximise economic viability. Thought provoking and easy to understand, Christopher Day uses everyday examples to relate his theories to practice and our experience.

What happens to buildings when they are no longer needed or have outlasted their original purpose? They are either lovingly restored so they can be used for something else--or they fall into ruin, where they remain as silent witnesses of a bygone era. French photographer Aurelien Villette has made it his mission to trace these dilapidated buildings--some completely forgotten by history--and capture their incomparable beauty in wondrous colour photographs. Whether his subject is a Christian chapel, an erstwhile theatre, or the events centre in a former Communist country, Villette brings the spirit and pathos the place once embodied back to life. At the same time, the ruins in his evocative photographs are stylised to create cultural heirlooms of the various periods and countries where they are located. The technically perfect photography allows the viewer to infer various architectural influences of earlier times, making this volume a very special historical and cultural documentation. Allow yourself to be transported by the breathtaking beauty of these images and dive into a former era where time stands still. SELLING POINTS: * Aurelien Villette captures the beauty of years gone by * Discover buildings of majestic grace and elegance * A must for any lover of wonderful photography and fascinating architecture of the past 100 colour photographs

The handbook presents a compendium of the diverse and growing approaches to place from leading authors as well as less widely known scholars, providing a comprehensive yet cutting-edge overview of theories, concepts and creative engagements with place that resonate with contemporary concerns and debates. The volume moves away from purely western-based conceptions and discussions about place to include perspectives from across the world. It includes an introductory chapter, which outlines key definitions, draws out influential historical and contemporary approaches to the theorisation of place and sketches out the structure of the book, explaining the logic of the seven clearly themed sections. Each section begins with a short introductory essay that provides identifying key ideas and contextualises the essays that follow. The original and distinctive contributions from both new and leading authorities from across the discipline provide a wide, rich and comprehensive collection that chimes with current critical thinking in geography. The book captures the dynamism and multiplicity of current geographical thinking about place by including both state-of-the-art, in-depth, critical overviews of theoretical approaches to place and new explorations and cases that chart a framework for future research. It charts the multiple ways in which place might be conceived, situated and practised. This unique, comprehensive and rich collection will be an essential resource for undergraduate and graduate teaching, for experienced academics across a wide range of disciplines and for policymakers and place-marketers. It will provide an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across the range of disciplines, such as Geography, Sociology and Politics, and interdisciplinary fields such as Urban Studies, Environmental Studies and Planning.

What might it mean, existentially and spiritually, for humans to form an intimate relation with particular sites or dwelling places on earth? In ancient Rome, the notion of a locale's genius loci signaled recognition of its enchanted, enspirited identity. But in a digitalized America of unprecedented mobility can place still matter as seed ground for the soul? Such questions have been broached by ecocritics concerned with how place-inflected experience figures in literature, and by theologians concerned with ecotheology and ecospirituality. This book offers a uniquely integrative perspective, informed by a theological phenomenology of place that takes fuller account of the spiritualities associated with built environments than ecocriticism typically does. Spirits of Place blends theological and cultural analysis with personal reflection, while focusing on the multi-layered witness presented by American literature. John Gatta's interpretive readings range across texts by an array of canonical as well as lesser-known writers. Along the way, it addresses such themes as the religious implications of localism vs. globalism; the diverse spiritualities associated with long-term residency, resettlement, and pilgrimage; why some sites seem more hallowed than others; and how the creative spirit of Imagination figures in place-identified perceptions of the numinous. Whether in Christian or other religious terms, no discrete place matters absolutely. Yet this study demonstrates how and why hallowed geography and the sacramentality of place have mattered throughout our cultural history.

It is January 1835 as a newly-orphaned thief gathers what meager possessions she can find, places them in a hessian bag, and barely escapes with her life. When her journey leads her to the squalor and poverty of Cork, Ireland, Cherokee Rose Harper is viewed as just another raggedy street urchin. But what no one knows is that she is being pursued by those who want nothing more than to punish her for her crime. With her only kin, her brother, away fighting as a mercenary, Cherokee Rose seemingly has no choice but to travel as far away as possible. After she disguises herself, she secures a job as a cabin boy on the ship, Neva, bound for the colony of New South Wales. While aboard, she befriends a young man, Ruian Conner, who protects her secret. Four months later when the Neva is wrecked in Bass Straight, Cherokee is rescued by a group of whalers and taken to mainland Australia where she is saved by an aboriginal, Wajum, who soon leads her on an unforgettable adventure across the grand continent. A Spirit of Place is the historical tale of a young orphan’s journey across the seas from everything she knows to a new life in mainland Australia.