As in the Heart So in the Earth

ECOLOGY / SPIRITUALITY "Pierre Rabhi is calling us urgently toward an act of reconciliation with the earth, and his own life is an exemplary model of it." --Yehudi Menuhin, violinist, conductor, and winner of the Nehru Peace Prize As in the Heart, So in the Earth is a strong indictment of a civilization that, while seeking domination over the earth, mutilates, tortures, and desacralizes it. For Pierre Rabhi, ecology is inseparable from spirituality. He explains how the growing desertification of North Africa is a reflection of the "desert" that is claiming the hearts and souls of the inhabitants of the Western world--how dead soil is mirrored in our deadened souls--and how reconciliation with Mother Earth must be accompanied by relearning our ancestors' reverence for the soil. Using a traditional African parable grounded in the very wisdom of the earth, Pierre Rabhi seeks to initiate the reader into a time when people dwelled in harmony with the planet and conversed easily with the land. Village elder Tyemoro recounts the gradual destruction of the culture of his village and all that has sustained it as the miracles promised by modern technology brought more harm than good. This same drama is recurring throughout the world, wherever indigenous value systems that have endured for millennia are subsumed by contact with modern civilization. Yet Rabhi offers hope, if those in the modern world will stop to hear the words of their ancestors who worked the land, for our destiny is linked irrevocably to that of the earth. PIERRE RABHI was born in Kenadsa, an oasis in southern Algeria, and grew up in France. He is an agro-ecology consultant for many international organizations, including the World Bank, and is a specialist in reversing the process of desertification. The author of several books, As in the Heart, So in the Earth is his first to appear in English. He lives and farms in the Ardeche region of France.