By Lloyd Geering

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Coming Back to Earth, the latest book by Prof. Lloyd Geering, is like a travel guide written for any modern-day religious pilgrim. With nary a stumble, Coming Back to Earth skillfully led this every-day spiritual traveler safely across the religious/theological divide between the Heavens fantasized by the Ancients and the heavens digitized by the Hubble.

In typical (and classic) Geering style, his book makes for easy reading, and therefore, easy understanding of some of the most conflicting and compelling issues confronting religious thought and behavior worldwide.  This writing focuses on and articulates an inclusive 21^st century world-view of religious reality that offers the hope of global re-approachment.   

This small book (218 pages) systematically sheds the straight jacket of Pre-Enlightenment thinking and embraces Post-Enlightenment realities while honoring the sacredness associated with both the fundamentalist and the secularist.  Geering’s book is sensitive to the sharp divisions across the world’s religions and he is careful to offer views that work to mediate religious and cultural chasms.

With the subtitle “From gods, to God, to Gaia” Geering reveals the simple trajectory of the text.  I was particularly drawn to the Gaia Theory - the planet earth exhibits many characteristics of a living system - and how he sees Gaia responding to human intervention: extinctions, global warming, pollution, and famine.  Geering provides a constructive commentary on this global crisis in his concept of the “greening of Christianity.”

While Geering’s mind seems expansive beyond limits, his writings distill the essence and this book is no exception. Whether cleric or lay, Coming Back to Earth has the ability to focus the reader on the long-term survival options available to humanity.  No matter one’s religious background (or absence thereof) no thinking person will have the same world-view on page 218 as was held on page 1.

I have one last observation. If epiphany = a moment of sudden and great revelation, then Coming Back to Earth = epiphany…in spades.