Eric Alan

Eric Alan is an author, photographer, lyricist, radio broadcaster and workshop leader. With the release of Grace and Tranquility in book and CD form, he continues a creative journey that has taken him across genres and decades. His previous book, Wild Grace: Nature as a Spiritual Path, has inspired workshops on the re-integration of nature into daily life, a regular column reaching several eastern states, and multi-media event collaborations with nationally recognized musicians. Grace and Tranquility further integrates his passions for meditative inquiry, photography and music. It’s a quest to share a path along which reliable daily tranquility can be found, no matter the world’s hard chaotic edges.

The companion CD of the same name adapts lyrics from his two books and merges them with the elegant music of the band Gypsy Soul. He divides his time between Cottage Grove and Ashland, Oregon, while also exploring wild and civilized places beyond. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Conversations: Grace and Tranquility

White Cloud's Spiritual Practice Forum
  • Simplicity
    “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” ~ Hans Hofmann Exposed to the summer sunlight of honest self-observation, most of us find contradictions. Check your mirror: we are constantly seduced by complexity, but often we escape the hard questions by allowing ourselves to [...]
  • Discipline
    “Without discipline, there’s no life at all.” ~ Katherine Hepburn The commitment you make to self-discipline weaves your spiritual practice into your daily life. That commitment nurtures mindfulness from disciplined moment to moment. You will find such discpline is its own reward, while it is also a continually renewed promise to yourself. [...]
  • The Lake of Transformation
    We simply came to view. But what we saw transformed us.
  • Easter Rabbits and Machine Guns
    In this small town, the annual Earth Day children’s parade passes right in front of the machine gun shop.
  • Returning to Newness
    Another favorite, familiar place I've never seen before.

“The 2010 Giants were a team of incredible emotion and sacrifice driven together by a goal that had never been achieved in their great city. Haft and Alan’s insightful journey allows you a look into the story that was forged by an incredible chemistry of unselfishness and sacrifice.”
– Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow

When I finally finished Grace & Tranquility I realized I'd been deliberately reading it more and more slowly, savoring it in smaller and smaller nibbles, as one puts off the inevitable conclusion of a sumptuous meal. It is a profoundly wise book in that it never announces itself as wisdom; and it has the power, precision and absolute necessity of poetry in that every page--while containing not a single superfluous syllable--purveys both an arresting image and a scintillating nugget of truth. Anyone interested in an unostentatiously elegant narrative of the human journey toward awareness will cherish both Grace & Tranquility and its predecessor, Wild Grace.
~Will Clipman, pan-global percussionist, poet, maskmaker, storyteller, six-time Grammy Award nominee
We can follow nature’s path through the tiny details of it present in our everyday lives--regardless of where we live and how damaged the natural order may be there. Nature offers a practical spirituality to be integrated into our daily lives as they are, rather than something we must radically alter our usual routines to include. It’s a natural mindfulness which sees the whole of the answers to our questions and difficulties in the tiniest details of the living, natural earth.
~ Eric Alan
Wild Grace - Nature as a Spiritual Path