Michael Schuler

Making the Good Life Last (eBook, ePUB)

Four Keys to Sustainable Living

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

So many of us are beset by anxiety, depression, loneliness, and spiritual malaise, tense and unhappy despite our gadgets and goodies. Michael Schuler, leader of the nation's largest Unitarian Universalist congregation, says it's because, urged on by an aggressively materialist culture, we too often opt for short-term gratification and long-term denial. In this thoughtful and deeply honest book, he helps us find a life path that leads to treasures of perennial value: a beautiful and healthy earth home, enduring relationships, strong communities, work that contributes to the common good, and play that restores our bodies and lifts our souls. Deconstructing the assumption that consumption, stimulation, and constant motion comprise the good life, Schuler urges the wholesale embrace of sustainability as both an operational principle and a life-sustaining core value. His book presents sustainability as a coherent frame of reference that can ground us spiritually, heal us internally, and deepen our relationships. Schuler identifies four behavioral principles for living sustainably-Pay Attention, Stay Put, Exercise Patience, and Practice Prudence-and shows how to apply them in our daily lives. He uses stories from his own life to illuminate the rewards and challenges of sustainable living and shares insights from environmentalists, social commentators, writers, poets, businesspeople, and spiritual leaders. Sustainability means more than mere survival-for individuals, just as for natural and social systems, it's the key to thriving rather than burning out. For those seeking a more profoundly satisfying way of life, Schuler's heartfelt explorations offer a counter intuitive answer: the sustainable life is the good life.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Seitenzahl: 220
• Erscheinungstermin: 3. April 2009
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781609944421
• Artikelnr.: 38332815

Autorenporträt

A fifth-generation native of Dixon, Illinois, a modest town straddling the Rock River, Michael A. Schuler returned with his family to the upper reaches of the same watershed in 1988, after an absence of twenty years. Since then, they have made their home in Madison, Wisconsin, where Michael has served as senior minister of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, a congregation that has grown from 500 to 1,500 adult members during his tenure. In the fall of 2008 the Society completed a sustainably designed, LEED- certified, 23,000-square-foot addition to its original Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Meeting House in keeping with the organic principles that America’s greatest architect once championed.

Inhaltsangabe

Foreword by Scott Russell Sanders
Preface
Introduction: Sustaining Ourselves
Part I: Reimagining the Good Life
Chapter 1. Embracing New Rules of Conduct
Chapter 2. Releasing Old Habits of Thought and Belief
Part II: The Four Keys
Chapter 3. Pay Attention
Chapter 4. Stay Put
Chapter 5. Exercise Patience
Chapter 6. Practice Prudence
Conclusion: A Sustainable Code of the Soul
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Author