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Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia: Exploring the Spirit of the Pacific Northwest
 
 

Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia: Exploring the Spirit of the Pacific Northwest [Paperback]

Douglas Todd
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
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"Douglas Todd has assembled some of Cascadia's best thinkers, essayists and poets to show how the Pacific Northwest's stunning wilderness and intricate ecology have inspired modern environmental movements, a self-reliant secular spirituality, ethnic pluralism and rugged independence. As this volume reveals, something spectacular is going on in Cascadia." -- Rex Weyler, author of Greenpeace: The Inside Story and The Jesus Sayings 'Students of British Columbia should have this book in their personal libraries.' Chr(45) BC Studies Winter 2009/2010

Book Description

This book will appeal to anyone who wants to understand the unique culture and spirituality of the fast-growing Pacific Northwest, which includes British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Envied by people around the world, Cascadia, as it is known, is remarkable for its famed mountains, evergreens, eagles, beaches and livable cities. Most people, however, do not realize that Cascadia, named after the region’s “cascading” waterfalls, is also home to the least institutionally religious people on the continent. Despite their unusual resistance to old ways of doing religion, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia argues that most of the 14 million residents of this rugged land are eclectically, informally, often deeply “spiritual.” One could not ask for more insightful Canadians and Americans to explain in lively detail how people in the Pacific Northwest get a sense of belonging out of finding fresh ways to experience the sacred. They do so particularly through the land, which in Cascadia, unlike in most parts of North America, is untamed and spectacular. Many find it overwhelming, humbling. In this original book, 15 leading writers, historians, bio-regionalists, pollsters, scholars, economists, philosophers, eco-theologians, literary analysts and poets explain how the Pacific Northwest is nurturing a unique “spirituality of place, .” which could become a model for the planet. Brought together by critically-acclaimed Vancouver Sun spirituality writer Douglas Todd, the gifted contributors to this book highlight Cascadians' unusually strong attraction to personal freedom, do-it-yourself optimism, “secular-but-spiritual” nature reverence and envisioning a healthy future that’s never before been realized: an elusive utopia. Contributors include noted historian Jean Barman, Canadian poet laureate George Bowering, political philosopher Philip Resnick, religion scholar Patricia O’Connell Killen and American-Canadian eco-theologian Sallie McFague.


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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Look out! You may be a Cascadian!, Nov 7 2008
By 
Richard Clark - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia: Exploring the Spirit of the Pacific Northwest (Paperback)
Do you have a feeling you're becoming more spiritual than religious? Is a sense of agnosticism creeping into your soul, accompanied by a growing disenchantment with "organized religion"? Are you beginning to realize Aboriginal wisdom may have been preferable to Caucasian expediencies? Are you starting to think globally before acting locally? Are you ruminating upon the idea that Earth may actually be our nearest Mother? Are you about to believe the hope of world peace deserves more than a sleepy nod? Did you graduate from college? Do you live in British Columbia, Washington, or Oregon? If you said yes to most of these questions, you may be a Cascadian!

Upon reading Douglas Todd's Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia, I realized for the first time, that I am also becoming a Cascadian. As this book's editor, Todd has gathered the essays of fifteen writers of varied backgrounds, but all sharing something of the Cascadian ideal. He has organized them to form four topics: "Cascadian Religion, Spirituality and Values," "Cascadian History," "Cascadian Nature," and "Cascadian Culture." To be sure, these writers share overlapping views that, together, provide a concept of all that sets Cascadia apart from the rest of the world. I find it fascinating--even inspiring and energizing.

As a retired sociology instructor, I found Mark Wexler's model interesting. It could have come from the mind of Talcott Parsons, had he been living today. It took a while to analyze it, but the longer I studied it, the more I recognized its logic.

Of course, I don't entirely fit the Cascadian model. But that's just a sign of my independent thinking, which, ironically, is a component of the model itself. I suspect, for example, that where there's the fire of spirituality, there must also be the smoke of religion. I imagine we are all agnostics, living in various states of affirmation or denial. Even atheists, I reckon, are agnostics somewhere deep down inside themselves. And as for the spiritual in the secular, I think it's the other way around. Most of Cascadian Christendom--whatever is left of it--is secular while sporting a spiritual façade.

Gail Wells, author of "Nature-Based Spirituality in Cascadia: Prospects and Pitfalls," wisely discusses Cascadian hazards such as a "radical emphasis on the self" with its "radical individualism," its ahistorical tendencies, a "preoccupation with wilderness" that "enables us to deny our roles as consumers and material creatures," a moral absolutism that can overrule compromise, an anti-scientific bias, and the possibility of nature-based spirituality becoming a shallow fad.

I couldn't agree entirely with Andrew Grenville's green map concept of Cascadian spirituality and values. There's no place for a marijuana mountain in my Cascadia. It reminds me of the hippies who seemed to think the numbing and killing of brain cells was a mark of intelligent behavior.

But Eli Bliss Enns touched my heart. I believe Aboriginal wisdom transcends every inch of development, urbanization, manufacturing, consumerism, and materialism (with consequential environmental destruction) that the "pioneers" thought was oh so smart and superior. It is a great tragedy that the "pioneers" failed to listen to the Native Americans. Our "pioneers" thought it was more appropriate to kill the Natives' buffalo, if not them, and then greedily to grab excessive tons of salmon, the Aboriginal source of nourishment and means of survival.

Sallie McFague's essay, "Toward a New Cascadian Civil Religion of Nature," presents an appropriate theology for all of us--whether we live in or out of Cascadia. Her analysis of a "first nature" and "second nature" is insightful. "The individual in the machine" versus "bodies living within the body of the Earth" is provocative. It's much in line with my own thinking: I interpret "human" to mean "the soil that thinks." We are children of Mother Earth.

Eleanor Stebner's essay, "Let Salmon be Salmon: The International Peace Arch as Symbol and Challenge," captured my heart. I live in Blaine, and my home is only one block south of Peace Arch State Park. I wanted Pugwash, Nova Scotia, to become the sister city of "Blaine the Peace Arch City." Interest in the idea grew, twenty sympathizers became the Blaine Peace Alliance, and one evening we asked our city council to approve the sister city dream. After all, Pugwash has been promoting peace for fifty years. Well, we scared the city council half to death, and all because Pugwash affiliated itself with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. That, the council concluded, was "political!" Our proposal was roundly defeated, and the Blaine Peace Alliance disbanded. So, not everyone in Washington state is a Cascadian. I'm greatly pleased Stebner noted my Pugwash proposal, and now the word will be spreading all over Cascadia, and beyond. I like to think the proposal will eventually be approved.

Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia, complete with beautiful photos, is a wonderful book. It's a book for thinkers, and I highly recommend it. More than that, I hope it will move every reader to wholesome action and accomplishment.
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Amazon.com: 5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Cascadia: Elusive and Exclusive!, Nov 23 2008
By Richard Clark - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia: Exploring the Spirit of the Pacific Northwest (Paperback)
For me, Cascadia is also an exclusive utopia. There's nothing quite like it on the North American continent. Douglas Todd's thought-provoking book illustrates the point by means of demographic studies, philosophical discussions, and observations of perspectives relevant to religion and spirituality, expressed by several authors.

Of course, it cannot be denied Cascadia is an elusive community, first and foremost. That's the way it is with utopias. For years I thought "utopia" meant a "good place." But I failed to notice the Greek spelling. Had it been rendered "outopia," I might have caught on sooner. It translates to "no place." Upon further reflection, I have come to realize how perceptive that meaning is.

Still, there can be a kind of utopia within the human spirit, and it is this utopia that I sense in Cascadia--a burgeoning phenomenon in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Todd's book brings me to a personal awareness of the Cascadia within. I had never before defined myself in quite that way.

I especially wish to thank Douglas Todd for including Dr. Eleanor Stebner's essay, "Let the Salmon be Salmon: the International Peace Arch as Symbol and Challenge," in his book. I live only one block from Peace Arch State Park and its adjoining sister, Peace Arch Provincial Park. I have long believed the Peace Arch deserves a higher profile and a greater meaning for all people who hold an interest in world peace.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for those who love the Pacific Northwest, Mar 9 2012
By hurricaneseye2015 - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia: Exploring the Spirit of the Pacific Northwest (Paperback)
I love how this book truly investigates the Pacific Northwest and the people who live there. There is a strong and unique emphasis on religious and spiritual questions in the book, which analyses the link between spirituality and geography in a way that no book I have ever read before this one does.
Many of the essays read very easily, and there are a variety of perspectives throughout the book. It appeals to many different interests: spiritual, ecological, literary, etc.
On the downside, there is not a lot of discussion of culture in this book, such as cuisine, collective personality, and sociology. It also repeats itself endlessly on some subjects, such as nature, instead of varying the content and discussing many other topics available, such as Western alienation and the pros and cons of an independent Cascadia.

I would recommend this book to anyone who loves the Pacific Northwest or wants to learn more about it by going beyond the basic facts and figures and touristy approach of travel guides.
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