The Planet You Inherit: Letters to My Grandchildren When Uncertainty's a Sure Thing

by Larry L. Rasmussen, Terry Tempest Williams (Foreword by)

Overview

For the first time ever, love letters consciously written by elders of one geologic epoch to the young of another.

Our children's and grandchildren's generation will face a different world, one affected by climate instability, mass uncertainty, and breathtaking extinction. In fact, the next generation will face the reality that human activity is changing the planet from one geological epoch to another.

From this vantage point—two generations across two geological epochs facing a fundamentally changing planet—Larry Rasmussen writes to his grandchildren. As a grandfather invested in a green earth and climate justice as well as a scholar of faith-based earth ethics, Rasmussen bridges this gap between generations to write to the future about climate change, global citizenship, democracy, and legacy. In topics ranging from "A Viable Way of Life" and "Democracy" to "Where We've Come From" and "Who We Are Now," Rasmussen explores the large questions of justice, meaning, and faith, encouraging us to speak to and look to the future generation and their future world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781506473536
Publisher:	1517 Media
Publication date:	11/29/2022
Pages:	213
Sales rank:	130,846
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 8.75(h) x (d)

About the Author

Larry L. Rasmussen, a renowned Christian environmental ethicist, is Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics, emeritus, at Union Theological Seminary. He is the author of Earth Community, Earth Ethics; winner of the Grawemeyer Award; and a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Christian Ethics. He has mentored a generation of scholars in eco-theology and green religion, rooted in practices of environmental justice within community contexts. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Terry Tempest Williams has been called "a citizen writer," a crucial voice for ecological consciousness and social change. She is the author of Refuge, Red, and The Hour of Land, among othersand is the recipient of numerous awards.

Table of Contents

Foreword 1

Author's Note 7

Epoch Times 9

Tender Years 19

Something to Write Home About 27

You Finish the Story 35

Love in a Time of Plague 41

"Love with Legs" 49

The Kindness of Microbial Strangers 57

The Core Keeps Score 63

We/They R Us 73

All Too Human 79

Different All the Same 85

What's in a Name If the Name Is God? 95

Coming of Age 103

The Uncontained God 109

Democracy Endangered 117

Democracy Enhanced 127

Aftemme 139

Elsewhere 149

Responsible by Degrees 155

It's All in the Pronouns 163

Becoming Good Ancestors 173

Leaving a Legacy 185

Acknowledgments 193

For Further Reading 195

Notes 197

Editorial Reviews

10/10/2022

This impassioned call to action by ethicist Rasmussen (Earth-Honoring Faith) meditates on climate change and the role faith might play in allaying it. In a series of dispatches addressed to his young grandsons, Rasmussen waxes poetic on humanity’s future and expounds on the role that Christianity can play in the climate crisis. He explains that his grandsons’ generation marks the transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene, the first epoch during which Earth’s climate will be significantly impacted by humans. Rasmussen reminisces on major crises of his lifetime, including John F. Kennedy’s assassination, 9/11, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the January 6 insurrection, lamenting the role that “religious pride” played in the attack. Warning his grandsons that the stakes they face are higher than those posed by these events, he posits that their task “will be to remap the world on an altered Earth for a different way of life in an uncharted future.” To meet this challenge, Rasmussen urges keeping faith in the power of a universal God found within the beauty and wonder of nature. Though these heartfelt missives sometimes stray from their focus on the environment, they capture the apprehension surrounding ecological collapse while outlining a faith-based mindset for healing the environment. These ruminative letters resound with pathos and hope. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"These ruminative letters resound with pathos and hope." ——Publishers Weekly

"There's real wisdom in this book, not just for the next generation but for those of us making the decisions right now. Those of us of a certain age have a very real responsibility to do everything we can to pass on a working planet to those who come after!" —Bill McKibben, Schumann Distinguished Scholar, Middlebury College, and author of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened

"The Planet You Inherit is a profound offering of wisdom and love, imparted by one of the preeminent ethicists of our time to his own grandchildren. What a blessing that we are invited to listen in, absorbing colorful pieces of history, mind-expanding glimpses of metaphysics, and a bedrock case for cultivating those 'bonds of love and belonging' that are essential to life. Beautifully written, unflinchingly honest, and deeply personal, this book is a guide for all who seek to live a full and moral life in this unprecedented time in which 'we are not only the ark but the flood.'" —Karenna Gore, author, activist, and executive director of the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary

"Larry Rasmussen has written a wise and compassionate book, precisely the sort of book our Anthropocene world needs. Don't let the title fool you. This is a book for young people, but it is also for all adults who now (and quickly) need to learn the art of becoming good ancestors." —Norman Wirzba, Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology, Duke University, and author of This Sacred Life

"Larry Rasmussen is one of the few great Christian ethicists of the last half-century. This profound and powerful text to the younger generation is a gem!" —Cornel West, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice, Union Theological Seminary

"Larry Rasmussen has created a unique collection of letters that will resonate not only with his grandchildren but with all those seeking a way forward through the climate emergency. To have anxiety about the future of the Earth community is to be awake in a broken world. Larry shows us how we might navigate this with empathy, compassion, and courage." —Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology

"Earth-honoring ethicist Larry Rasmussen pours out a lifetime of environmental knowledge, prophetic witness, and personal experience. His letters will inspire the rising generation—and the older folks reading over their shoulders—to ever-bolder love for this precious biosphere, its unjustly divided inhabitants, and the Living Presence that sustains all things and summons us to responsibility." —Mark R. Schwehn and Dorothy C. Bass, grandparents of six and coeditors of Leading Lives That Matter

"The relationship between generations, especially between grandparent and grandchild, is essential to the path ahead. The open-eyed wonder of childhood, in tandem with age's studied wisdom, is exactly what we need. The Planet You Inherit models the way forward for us all. It is a book of extraordinary hope in a time of urgent need." —John Philip Newell, author of Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul

"Many of us thirst to hear about the climate emergency in a manner that sparks imagination; places us wide-awake in a future defined by displacement and vulnerability; breaks, opens, and activates our hearts to care and do more. These letters from Grandpa, whom many of us cherish as Prof. Larry Rasmussen, do this humanizing work justly and with fearful grace." —Rev. Fletcher Harper, executive director of GreenFaith

From the Publisher