Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World Reviews

A beautiful book.

Dwellings, as its title suggests, is about the living world - about nature and its inhabitants. Writing from the native perspective, the author encourages her reader to experience her vivid descriptions of nature and animals intimately, to see the world from a different angle, that is, to see us as part of the living world rather than apart from it. The book, which is a collection of writings, is beautifully and sincerely written; Hogan's love of the natural world permeates everything she writes, and her love would move anyone who cares to "listen" (reading is a listening) to what she has to say. I have to admit though that I couldn't get into her writing in the beginning, mostly because the first pieces in the collection were rather mythical. My defensive wall went right up when she started talking about magical eagle feathers. However, the book is really about our connection to the rest of the world, which we tend to forget in our anthropocentric and materialistic world.

We are of the animal world. We are part of the cycles of growth and decay. Even having tried so hard to see ourselves apart, and so often without a love for even our own biology, we are in relationship with the rest of the planet, and that connectedness tells us we must reconsider the way we see ourselves and the rest of nature.