The Sacred Balance, 25th anniversary edition

The 25th anniversary edition of The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature by David Suzuki has just been released. I have a small part in this book as I helped edit the third edition back in 2007. (See my name in small print?) I received my updated edition a few weeks ago and I was most excited to see that Robin Wall Kimmerer, who wrote the stellar Braiding Sweetgrass and the less-well-know but also wonderful Gathering Moss, wrote the foreword.

She writes: “Adaptation, the ability to change in such a way that enhances survival and flourishing, occurs not only in the resilience of an individual, but within populations over time. Accumulated changes that increase fitness in a changing world are encoded in genetic libraries and manifest in altered structures, functions and behaviours. Suzuki suggests that restoring the sacred to our our relationship with nature may be the most important adaptation we can make. Here, I think, is the most vital message he carries: that spiritual beliefs and practices, encoded in a worldview, are of immense adaptive value.”