From acclaimed author Sharman Apt Russell comes this wise and haunting new memoir about her life as a pantheist.'Everything is connected, and the web is holy.' So wrote Marcus Aurelius, the starting point of Perhaps no other religious philosophy is as simple and inclusive as pantheism. What is, right now, is divine; there is no God apart from the universe itself. In Standing in the Light, Russell explores the history of this tradition from the Stoic philosophers to the Transcendentalists while reflecting on her own life during a year spent in the mountains and desert of New Mexico, where nature provides the inspiration for meditations on subjects ranging from Buddhist thought to the death of her father, from the Quaker tradition to the sadness of children leaving home, from global warming to the ineffable loneliness of human experience.With a humane heart, an inquisitive mind, and luminescent prose, Sharman Apt Russell invites sceptics, scientists and seekers everywhere to join in her exploration of the soul of pantheism.