Most of us know, abstractly, that the human body and human consciousness did not wink into existence.
Most of us have some vague understanding that these have been knitted together over billions of years
by processes inherent in the expanding universe and over millions of years by relationships within
ecological systems that likewise have emerged in this way.
But abstract, vague understanding of these realities is not enough. In fact, it is tragically inadequate. It
has failed to guide our technological and economic systems, governmental institutions, religious
traditions, and habits of mind into line with the needs of the Earth. As a consequence, Earth systems and
relationships that brought us into existence and that sustain us are rapidly faltering. At the same time,
abstract, vague understanding of our cosmological and ecological origins represents a psychological and
spiritual lapse. Most of us most of the time feel profoundly separate from the Earth – on it, rather than
of it. We permit ourselves only a pinhole view of a vast web of kinship.
We are held in a long, long embrace of dust, gas, galaxies, stellar cores, rock, water, soil, plants, fungi,
and fellow animals. We are more profoundly and achingly home than most of us have dared imagine.
And in this crucial moment, as ecosystems crumble, we must decide, at last, whether to return the
embrace.
Prayers of the New Earth is Jeff Howard’s initial effort to articulate this need – and this opportunity –
through poetry and photography. In this Buddhism-oriented work, he celebrates humanity as an organic
expression of a living world in a living cosmos. He challenges us to ease ourselves into awareness of a
larger self.