The great conversation Nature and the care of the soul
Book - 2019
"The Great Conversation is Lane's multi-faceted treatise on a spiritually centered environmentalism. At the core is a belief in the power of the natural world to act as teacher. In a series of personal anecdotes, Lane pairs his own experiences in the wild with the writings of saints and sages from a wide range of religious traditions. A night in a Missourian cave brings to mind the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola; the canyons of southern Utah elicit a response from the Chinese philosopher Laozi; 500,000 migrating sandhill cranes rest in Nebraska and evoke the Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar. With each chapter, the humility of spiritual masters through the ages melds with the author's encounters with natural teachers to... offer guidance for entering once more into a conversation with the world."--
- Subjects
- Published
-
New York, NY :
Oxford University Press
[2019]
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Physical Description
- xii, 329 pages : illustrations, portrait ; 25 cm
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 275-317) and index.
- ISBN
- 9780190842673
- Permissions
- Preface
- Introduction: Wilderness and Soul Work
- Part I. Beginning to Listen
- Chapter 1. Restoring the Great Conversation
- Chapter 2. Failing in Love with a Tree
- Part II. Nature Teachers and the Spiritual Life
- Air: The Child
- Chapter 3. Birds: Sandhill Cranes, the Platte River, and Farid ud-Din Attar
- Chapter 4. Wind: Buford Mountain and The Way of a Pilgrim
- Chapter 5. Trees: A Cottonwood Tree in a City Park and Hildegard of Bingen
- Fire: The Adolescent
- Chapter 6. Wildfire: North Laramie River Trail and Catherine of Siena
- Chapter 7. Stars: Cahokia Mounds and Origen of Alexandria
- Chapter 8. Deserts: The Western Australian Bush and Gregory of Nyssa
- Water: The Adult
- Chapter 9. Rivers: Colorado's Lost Creek Wilderness and Teresa of Ávila
- Chapter 10. Canyons: Grand Staircase-Escalante Wilderness and Laozi
- Chapter 11. Islands: Monhegan Island and Nikos Kazantzakis
- Earth: The Elder
- Chapter 12. Mountains: Hemmed-In-Hollow and the Baal Shem Tov
- Chapter 13. Caves: Lewis Cave and Ignatius of Loyola
- Chapter 14. Wolves: Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Francis of Assisi
- Conclusion: Taking the Great Conversation Seriously
- Afterword
- Notes
- Index