Nature, My Teacher - James Thornton

A fierce and tender study of how to be alive in a world that is under threat.

What is memory? How do you summon compassion? How do we care for ourselves?

In Nature, My Teacher, poet, lawyer and founder of top global environmental group ClientEarth, James Thornton offers a meditation on being alive while the planet fights to survive. This a lawyer whose client is the Earth. He visits his client. It speaks to him. In Nature, my Teacher he passes on some of those teachings. He explores topics such as memory, climate anxiety, and human consciousness through a series of short essays, arranged into twelve “books”, each closing with a poem and a photo to leave readers in a reflective space.

As a Zen priest from Los Angeles, James contemplates what he has learnt from observing and listening to nature, and shows that when the planet is hurting, we too feel its pain.

The way this book is opening hearts and minds is remarkable. Arianna Huffington found it “powerful and moving”, Zen abbot and author Joan Halifax sums: “A profound guide to discovering the great wisdom in the natural world, this book…is a treasure for all”.

This book ripples with beauty, and also gazes steadily at climate anxiety. James is clear-sighted. We are right to be troubled by ecological collapse, but there are ways to save ourselves and save the world.