The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, by Thom Hartmann, is a depressing book and an optimistic one.

I found it both VERY depressing and VERY optimistic. When a friend offered to lend it to me,  I wasn’t going to take it till I noticed who had written it. Hartmann is a prolific and profound writer on many subjects. I took the book and buried it in a large pile until I had the emotional stamina to tackle the state of the world. That was a couple of days ago.

For two days, off and on, I read one discouraging fact after another until my heart was down in my shoes. “I’m not going to read any more of it today,” I said to my husband at dinner last night. “I want a good night’s sleep and if I read one more example of how the planet is being destroyed, I think I will melt down.” So I did other things during the evening. But a curiosity was growing in me. Hartmann had held out the carrot at the start of the book, that the ending was optimistic. I kept wondering how he was going to pull that off.

So I succumbed. I read the last part of the book. And yes, it is profoundly optimistic. I felt much better. He writes of the morphic field, of our connection with God, of David and Goliath, of the power of each of us to make a difference day by day. I felt more and more connected as I read, and I felt more hope and excitement about my own work and my own life. As for the Big Bad Picture, I realized I needed to have some patience. But did I sleep well? Ha. Highly recommended. And he has more books out since this one. Both this link and the image above will take you to Amazon. To find out more about Hartmann, including his free podcasts, go to www.thomhartmann.com. And here’s a revised version of the book: