SONG
AND
SHADOWS
Our Need for the Sacred in Our Surroundings
Tom Bender
Silence, Song and Shadows introduces bold new perspectives on how the sacred and chi energy in our surroundings affect our lives and health. Explaining the energetic connections between people and place with historical and modern examples, it presents successful techniques through which we can experience and apply this aspect of design. Key concepts and actions are outlined to help us bring sacredness into our own homes and communities. An eloquent and visually powerful introduction to the energetics of place.
It explores a sweeping new dimension of energy and healing, showing how the world outside of our bodies affects our health. It :
* Shows movingly how to use the heart of community our dreams, values, and connectedness to create places sustained by love.
* Brings the sacred down to earth and into concrete application in our everyday lives, in ways we wouldn't have dreamed possible.
* Demonstrates real feng-shui - for today - masterfully translated and applied in ways that can powerfully change our lives and our surroundings.
* Contains a whole array of new and easily applied tools with which we can bring the sacred and chi energy into our own surroundings.
10" x 10" - over 170 full color photographs - ISBN 0-9675089-0-8 - $27
Praise for Tom Bender's Silence, Song & Shadows:
"Silence, Song & Shadows explores a sweeping new dimension of energy and healing, showing how the world outside of our bodies affects our health. Explaining the energetic connections between people and place with historical and modern examples, it presents successful techniques through which we can experience and apply this aspect of design. Key concepts and actions are outlined to help us bring sacredness into our own homes and communities. Contains a whole array of new and easily applied tools with which we can bring the sacred and chi energy into our own surroundings. An eloquent and visually powerful introduction to the energetics of place."
OIKOS® GREEN BUILDING SOURCE
"This is the first book to put Bender's encompassing, soulful wisdom in the beautiful setting it deserves, accompanied by a collection of deeply resonant color photos of sacred moments and places. The book gently and passionately reawakens awareness of how to restore the sacred in our world. Bender describes chi (life energy) and its manifestations in a way that finally makes it real. Reading this book is a healing experience that we can't afford to miss, personally or professionally."
BUILDING WITH NATURE
"The visionary architect and thinker Tom Bender is a master of place making. This visually stunning paperback unfurls a blueprint for a craft that is essentially spiritual. With the lyrical style of a poet and a sweep of gorgeous photographs, he shows us how reverence, austerity, right intention, caring, and connections can bring about profound changes in architecture, landscape, interior, and urban design. Robert Sardello (Love and the Soul) challenged us to ensoul the places where we live and work and play. Tom Bender's Silence, Song & Shadows shows us how."
SPIRITUALITY AND HEALTH
"Silence, Song & Shadows reveals a whole new linkage between health, design, and place. Bender provides new insights into the role of chi energy and the sacred in our interaction with our surroundings and their importance for personal, community, and planetary health. He gives new context for work with chi energy within our own bodies, and a new justification for wider acknowledgment of chi by our society. It will prove of intense interest to students of feng-shui, spirituality, metaphysics, architecture, and health."
REVIEWER'S BOOKWATCH
"A breath of fresh air after you've been bombarded with tons of get-rich-quick self-help feng shui manuals! Bender introduces the pioneering idea of the role of chi in healing social illness and restoring personal, cultural and environmental health . . . and demonstrates how to use these concepts in design. Eloquently written and illustrated . . . a must for all serious feng shui lovers."
FENG SHUI FOR MODERN LIVING
" . . . simple principles for transforming both our immediate surroundings and the larger community. A delectable melange of photography and prose . . . understandable tools for improving both our inner and outer spaces."
NOETIC SCIENCES REVIEW
" . . . a stunning book filled with incredible photographs of just how beautiful living areas can potentially become. A powerful, gorgeous exploration into the concept of making home environments work with natural elements rather than against them."
INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER ONLINE
"Silence, Song, and Shadows, lifts me out of my daily engagement with the mundane, material side of environmental building. . . .a richly illustrated primer into the spirit of place, and the place of spirit, in buildings. Bender, an architect and deep thinker about sustainability, speaks of how we can create sacred spaces, places of the soul "A place with a soul gives refuge and sanctuary. It fills primal psychic needs for protection, for warmth, for companionship, for meaning." He tells us about making a garden of the spirit, "a place....of giving, of that impulse of love which underlies all life and creation." Many of the accepted practices of sustainable building are re-visited and set into this larger context. He says, "Durability thus grants a generosity to the places we make that can be obtained in few other ways," and "Using natural materials rooted in the places where we build imparts a truth of meaning and connection to our places."
ENVIRONMENTAL BUILDING NEWS
Readers' Comments:
"Reading this is a healing experience, filled with deep truths. Bender brings new life to the concept of chi. I feel moved to apply the simple, profound approaches he describes so well."
- Carol Venolia, author of HEALING ENVIRONMENTS
"A wondrous work about the sacred nature of place and home, a forgotten language of design and craft that humans have used for millennia to discourse with their gods and inner selves. This book will make you ache for what we have lost, yet guide you to finding and creating enchantment once again."
Paul Hawken, author of NATURAL CAPITALISM
"The healing energy of place - why and how to bring sacred energy into the spaces that surround us. .....Lovely!"
Donna Eden, author of ENERGY MEDICINE
"Bender reaches beneath the surface of ordinary life to find the essence of sacred space. Simply, yet eloquently, he prepares a pathway for us to occupy the universe as well as our intimate surroundings in a way that is meaningful and holy."
Denise Linn, author of SACRED SPACE
"Places the central questions of our time directly on the shrine of spirit, where they so richly belong. Here are the philosophical and spiritual foundations for a sustainable future. Everyone in the "green building" movement should read this book."
David Rousseau, author of YOUR HOME, YOUR HEALTH
"Captivating and enlightening! .... touches the heart, moves the soul, and reaches the core of our lives. I savored every page and couldn't wait to share it with others."
Gail A. Lindsey, 1998 Chair, AIA Committee on the Environment
"A lantern of hope for all concerned with the creation of a more sustainable and balanced world."
Sarah Susanka, author of THE NOT SO BIG HOUSE