About Uprisings for the Earth ~ Osprey Orielle Lake


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- About Osprey Orielle Lake

About Uprisings for the Earth

Praise for Uprisings for the Earth
(Partial)

"Uprisings for the Earth creates new, vibrant ground that holds within it keys to finding our way to a meaningful and vital relationship with the natural world in modern civilization. Osprey Orielle Lake's unique, personal, and inspiring perspective on current and historical events makes us proud to be human as we search for self-responsibility and renewal while defying apathy and cynicism. Her book presents a philosophy that is both rich in nature poetics and filled with good sense. Within compelling and dynamic verse, Lake makes a call to discover and uphold what she has named an ‘Earth etiquette.' This is a call we need to answer, and Lake makes us thrilled to do it."

~ Riane Eisler, author The Chalice and The Blade and The Real Wealth of Nations.

"If you are searching for your 'ground of being' in these turbulent times, this is the book to read. Osprey Orielle Lake shares with us how to listen to the natural world in our midst and offers some penetrating philosophical nuggets, while tantalizing us occasionally with her poetic flare. The result is a healthy dose of wisdom and a dynamic process for renewing our cultural narrative in a time of societal and environmental change. Uprisings for the Earth is the kind of ecological literacy we need today."

~ Tony Clarke, co-author Blue Gold and author Tar Sands Showdown.

"Seeing both the peril and the promise of this moment in time, Osprey Orielle Lake brings us stories infused with her passion for life. Like winds off the mountains, they renew our energy and summon our will to rise up together for the sake of Earth."

~ Joanna Macy, author World as Lover, World as Self.

"Uprisings for the Earth is a book for leaders and for those who feel the call to lead in this historic moment. The unity of Earth's biological functioning has been broken, and thus all intelligent humans are united in a search for planetary healing. What you will experience in Uprisings for the Earth you will experience nowhere else."

~ Brian Swimme, California Institute of Integral Studies, co-author The Universe Story with Thomas Berry.

"This book gives us a deep understanding of how the current course we are on has led to our dire planetary predicament and what we can do to change it. As an artist and advocate for the Earth, using personal experience and reflection, Lake offers a refreshing perspective on our capacity for intimacy with rivers, forests, mountains, valleys and each other in a time of environmental crisis. This thoughtful book presents a necessary and urgent call to action, cogent advice for all those who wish to be engaged in healing a culture disconnected from nature and in caring for our future."

~ Susan Griffin, author Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy and Woman and Nature

"In these times of great economic, political and environmental dislocation, Osprey Orielle Lake's Uprisings for the Earth challenges us to rise to the call of history and recommit ourselves individually and collectively, to creating a safe and sustainable future and that we do it with joy and laughter and love and awe and celebration!"

~ Belvie Rooks, Growing a Global Heart

"This is one of the most important books I have read in recent years. Uprisings for the Earth is powerfully inspiring and provides an essential road map to transform our connection with nature and culture at a critical time in human history. The stories are personal and open both the heart and the mind. You will be better for having read this jewel of a book."

~ John Gray, author Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

"Uprisings for the Earth's style may be particularly effective in pointing to ways that a revitalized American culture can contribute towards the establishment of a sorely needed Earth-honoring global culture. Lake's work invokes symbols and events like the American Revolution, the Statue of Liberty and the contribution of US women to democratic culture that appeal directly to a populous whose high level of consumption is contributing disproportionally to the ecological crisis. Given the hold that American culture has on people around the world today and the way she demonstrates a role for that culture in fostering partnership, sustainability, balance, equity and harmony, Lake's vision is an especially cogent contribution to the contemporary literature on nature and culture."
~ Christopher Hrynkow in The Journal of American Culture

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Intimacy with Nature

Intimacy with nature is a mystery whose enterprise, like moving water, is to flow past boundaries and to invite connectivity. I do not know exactly when it happened: perhaps while on an adventure when I was ten years old, discovering an arrowhead along the banks of Big River and imagining the flint knapper who walked this water course before me, or maybe during a summer swim as I weightlessly flew underwater, dreaming of curious sea lions who glided upstream with me from their ocean home. It might have been years later as I canoed miles upriver to catch a glimpse of a fledgling osprey or while listening to the invisible Old Ones whose whispered bardic tales are carried on the river's ripples only after dark.

Somewhere in these events, my body became a part of the Big River Watershed. The waters' spirit cracked open my heart, bidding me to always remember that this natural beauty is not only a luxury to revere, but also an indispensable key to our collective coherence as a species.

The blue-green flowing course reminds me that we cannot live without water. The simple and profound equation is this: water is life. Yet, the startling reality is that today, more than one billion people worldwide do not have access to safe drinking water, resulting in nearly two million fatalities a year due to waterborne diseases. Most of these deaths are among children. With water scarcity increasing due to human population growth, pollution, and climate change, clearly our relationship to water must change.

First and foremost, we must secure access to clean and safe water as a basic human right for everyone in every country. This will require not only changing our detrimental use of water, but also ensuring that no institutions or corporations impede on this life-giving right to water. Communities around the world are now engaged in critical struggles to protect their local waters and it is time that we uphold water as a global commons for all.

To support efforts to protect and defend water, we also can look beneath the surface of the stream into the deeper currents of our understanding about it, and in this manner begin healing our relationship with this irreplaceable liquid.

~ Uprisings for the Earth,
Osprey Orielle Lake, 2010

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