Читать книгу The Souls of Animals - Gary Kowalski - Страница 8

Preface

Have you noticed how often it is that small children are fascinated by and take delight in animals? They seem to experience a kinship, an affectionate bond with other creatures that helps to make them whole and who they are. Can you remember the first time you saw an elephant? Or a giraffe? We’re talking major excitement here, wide-eyed jubilation.

Yet our adult society views animals in quite another way, as commodities or resources, as things, objects, and tools. We use them. We eat them. We experiment on them. They no longer enchant and delight us.

We see them now only as means to our ends. We don’t know what we have lost.

The Souls of Animals is an eloquent and timely book that can help us regain our connection to the mysterious and wonderful creatures who share this planet’s adventure with us. It is a beautiful book, and it is a healing one, for it brings to our consciousness the awareness that we need to regain if we are to learn to live in harmony with the natural world.

This book will open your heart and your mind to the mysterious and wonderful companions who fly, walk, and otherwise populate this beautiful Earth.

Ann Mortifee once wrote, “You can’t see a bright tomorrow with yesterday’s eyes.” Gary Kowalski has given us a book that brings us new eyes, eyes with which we can again look at the world and ourselves with respect and reverence, eyes that can enable us to participate in the sacred potential of Creation.

It is an honor to be able to introduce you to such a treasure. The Souls of Animals is about our kinship with life. It is a step away from loneliness and alienation, a step toward finding ourselves welcome and well amongst the Earth community. It is about learning to take our place with reverence and respect in the council of all beings.

—JOHN ROBBINS

PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

John Robbins is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–nominated book Diet for a New America published in 1987.