The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality

Belden Lane has written a remarkable book. I so appreciate his modesty as exhibited, for example, at p. 217: "What little expertise I can offer to legitimate these words lies less in the training of a scholar than in the perseverance of the companero, one who has traveled with another through dangerous territory." Lane is a scholar and a good one. He knows how and when to document his sources. He is a theologian and a good one, one who appreciates the value of non-Christian religions. He is also a wounded and broken human being, like us all. His writing does not take us to the lofty heights of Theologia and Esoterica leaving us to wonder how to return to the Real World. Lane takes HIS woundedness (and if we would only will it, we the readers may let go and take OUR own wondedness with us as we journey with Lane) with him. It is Lane's lived experiences that make sense out of the lofty heights of Theologia and Esoterica, as well as the aridity Philosophia's desertscape. This is a great book and those who complain of its over-sentimentality totally miss the point. They may well be resisting dealing with their own woundedness.

This is a rare treasure among the multitude of contemporary books on spirituality. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in a fresh view on cultivating a sense of the divine in everyday life. A friend of mine gave me this book, impressed as she was by the lovely and compelling title, and I have since read it through twice, and now refer to it often when I need an uplift for my soul (...often at night). I believe that this is a book for anyone seriously interested in finding real depth in their spiritual path. I am not the first to say this, but in a world of "user-friendly" and "feel good" religion and practices, this book reminds us of how difficult life can be, and of the power to be found in a dedicated heart. In the midst of his own personal trials, the author found deep wisdom, and solace, in his exploration of those who sought for God in remote places. He shares this with his readers in moving and profound ways, and I am grateful to the author that he has done so.

In one word, Professor Lane's book is ASTONISHING! As a graduate of the GTU in Berkeley, California, this book acted as a compass, pointing me deeper into the landscape of isolation during my graduate theological studies. Not being a stranger to solitude in wild places which has taken me all over the world, this book was a map to thrust me deeper into the themes Lane advocates so forcefully. Fierce landscapes have been explored since the begining of time by humankind, but in our contemporary moment this is a reintroduction for a few brave souls learning to trust more than the pathos of modern culture. This new - and at the same time - old territory may provide the medicine for planetary healing. Lane's spirituality pulls no punches, holds no hands, and provides a kick in the rear end for a sanitized spirituality found in most churches these days. His erudition on the Deseret Fathers uniquely shows these men, not only challenging the frontiers of cultural hegemony, but repudiating it in no uncertain terms. As far as spirituality books go, this one is a primer to engage empowerment on multiple spiritual levels. As metaphor, this book is a modern expression of Jedi Training, for those with the courage to walk these uncharted contours of the psyche. Read everything Professor Lane writes.

This book is a gem for anyone who appreciates monasticism and the beauty and spirituality of the desert. It contains some of the freshest theological insights I have come across in quite awhile.

This is a most amazing book, impossible to classify. It is written on a number of levels at once; if you have read `Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', which broke new ground twenty years or so ago, you will know what I mean. The whole book is about prayer, in one way or another; I found it marvellous and beautifully written. If you are a desert dweller, this one is for you. The exploration of desert and mountain landscapes goes hand in hand with a reading of the apophatic traditions of prayer. "The desert practice of contemplative prayer abandons, on principle, all experiences of God or the self. It simply insists that being present before God, in a silence beyond words, is an end in itself....In the practice of contemplation, one comes eventually to embrace an apophatic anthropology, letting go of everything one might have imagined as constituting the self - one's thoughts, one's desires, all one's compulsive needs. Joined in the silence of prayer to a God beyond knowing, I no longer have to scramble to sustain a fragile ego but discern instead the source and ground of my being in the fierce landscape of God alone. One's self is ever a tenuous thing, discovered only in relinquishment. I recognize it finally as a vast, empty expanse opening out on to the incomparable desert of God". (pp 12-13) . . . "Apophatic spirituality has to start at the point where every other possibility ends. Whether we arrive there by means of a moment of stark extremity in our lives or (metaphorically) by way of entry into a high desert landscape, the sense of inadequacy remains the same. Prayer without words can only begin where loss is reckoned as total"