Idealism and reality meet in this inspirational guide. Kyle Kramer shares with us his ongoing adventures and misadventures on the path to greater emotional, mental, and material freedom. “If you strip away or simplify the right things in the right way,” he writes, “it actually opens you up to a deeper, richer level of appreciation of life's gifts.” While each person will have a different path, what unites us and give us hope is our common values and the common ground beneath our feet: “this one, beautiful, God-given, wonderful, wounded planet that we all share.” The goal is to be better able to engage in loving relationships and a way of life that is spiritually nurturing, socially just, and environmentally sustainable.
 

Kyle Kramer is the Executive Director of the Passionist Earth & Spirit Center (www.earthandspiritcenter.org), which offers interfaith educational programming in meditation, ecology, and social compassion. Educated at Indiana University, the Universität Hamburg (Germany), and Emory University, he is the former director of graduate theology programs and spiritual formation for Saint Meinrad, a Benedictine monastery and Roman Catholic school of theology. Kyle and his family spent fifteen years as organic farmers and homesteaders in Spencer County, Indiana. Kyle serves as a Catholic Climate Ambassador for the USCCB-sponsored Catholic Climate Covenant and is the author of A Time to Plant: Life Lessons in Work, Prayer, and Dirt (Ave Maria Press, 2010). He is a former columnist and essayist for America magazine and a current columnist for Franciscan Media’s St. Anthony Messenger magazine.