The great conversation Nature and the care of the soul

Belden C. Lane, 1943-

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."--

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Subjects
Published
New York, NY : Oxford University Press [2019]
Language
English
Main Author
Belden C. Lane, 1943- (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
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Lane (Backpacking with the Saints), a former professor of theology at St. Louis University, makes a strong argument for connection between the natural and spiritual realms in this multidisciplinary travelogue-cum-memoir. As in his previous work, Belden features backpacking heavily, fierce natural landscapes (such as the Western Australian desert), and luminaries from world religions, including St. Francis, Laozi, and Baal Shem Tov. Lane opens on an unconventional note: he talks to trees and is in love with one, an elderly cottonwood near his home. That confession is the premise for a comprehensive argument based in both science and emotion: nature can and does communicate and teach, Lane writes, but humans have forgotten the language. Lane provides extensive footnotes that explore recent research on ecological systems that calls into question the definition of individual life and consciousness, citing Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Lives of Trees and David Quammen's The Tangled Tree, among others. By combining memoir with the lives of saints and other spiritual figures, Lane provides a stimulating testament to the spiritual value of the natural world. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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