Backpacking with the Saints

Backpacking with the Saints PDF Author: Belden C. Lane
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199394172
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Carrying only basic camping equipment and a collection of the world's great spiritual writings, Belden C. Lane embarks on solitary spiritual treks through the Ozarks and across the American Southwest. For companions, he has only such teachers as Rumi, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Dag Hammarskj?ld, and Thomas Merton, and as he walks, he engages their writings with the natural wonders he encounters--Bell Mountain Wilderness with S?ren Kierkegaard, Moonshine Hollow with Thich Nhat Hanh--demonstrating how being alone in the wild opens a rare view onto one's interior landscape, and how the saints' writings reveal the divine in nature. The discipline of backpacking, Lane shows, is a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Just as the wilderness offered revelations to the early Desert Christians, backpacking hones crucial spiritual skills: paying attention, traveling light, practicing silence, and exercising wonder. Lane engages the practice not only with a wide range of spiritual writings--Celtic, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, and Sufi Muslim--but with the fascination of other lovers of the backcountry, from John Muir and Ed Abbey to Bill Plotkin and Cheryl Strayed. In this intimate and down-to-earth narrative, backpacking is shown to be a spiritual practice that allows the discovery of God amidst the beauty and unexpected terrors of nature. Adoration, Lane suggests, is the most appropriate human response to what we cannot explain, but have nonetheless learned to love. An enchanting narrative for Christians of all denominations, Backpacking with the Saints is an inspiring exploration of how solitude, simplicity, and mindfulness are illuminated and encouraged by the discipline of backcountry wandering, and of how the wilderness itself becomes a way of knowing-an ecology of the soul.

Backpacking with the Saints

Backpacking with the Saints PDF Author: Belden C. Lane
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199927812
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Backpacking with the Saints is a captivating account of solo wilderness backpacking as spiritual practice. On his solitary hikes, Belden Lane has as companions the great spiritual texts of the world's religions. The wilderness, he argues, offers an enlightening approach to the texts, presenting the opportunity to explore the interior landscape and the spiritual realm of nature. The book thoughtfully examines the place of nature in the spiritual life and the dynamics of reading in the wild.

Backpacking with the Saints

Backpacking with the Saints PDF Author: Belden C. Lane
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199394172
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Get Book Here

Book Description
Carrying only basic camping equipment and a collection of the world's great spiritual writings, Belden C. Lane embarks on solitary spiritual treks through the Ozarks and across the American Southwest. For companions, he has only such teachers as Rumi, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Dag Hammarskj?ld, and Thomas Merton, and as he walks, he engages their writings with the natural wonders he encounters--Bell Mountain Wilderness with S?ren Kierkegaard, Moonshine Hollow with Thich Nhat Hanh--demonstrating how being alone in the wild opens a rare view onto one's interior landscape, and how the saints' writings reveal the divine in nature. The discipline of backpacking, Lane shows, is a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Just as the wilderness offered revelations to the early Desert Christians, backpacking hones crucial spiritual skills: paying attention, traveling light, practicing silence, and exercising wonder. Lane engages the practice not only with a wide range of spiritual writings--Celtic, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, and Sufi Muslim--but with the fascination of other lovers of the backcountry, from John Muir and Ed Abbey to Bill Plotkin and Cheryl Strayed. In this intimate and down-to-earth narrative, backpacking is shown to be a spiritual practice that allows the discovery of God amidst the beauty and unexpected terrors of nature. Adoration, Lane suggests, is the most appropriate human response to what we cannot explain, but have nonetheless learned to love. An enchanting narrative for Christians of all denominations, Backpacking with the Saints is an inspiring exploration of how solitude, simplicity, and mindfulness are illuminated and encouraged by the discipline of backcountry wandering, and of how the wilderness itself becomes a way of knowing-an ecology of the soul.

The Great Conversation

The Great Conversation PDF Author: Belden C. Lane
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190842679
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
In the face of climate change, species loss, and vast environmental destruction, Belden C. Lane's spiritually centered environmentalism suggests that we must look to teachers in nature to understand how to save ourselves. Pairing anecdotes of personal encounters with nature with the teachings of spiritual leaders from a range of religious traditions, this book invites us to participate once more in the great conversation among all creatures and the earth itself.

The Solace of Fierce Landscapes

The Solace of Fierce Landscapes PDF Author: Belden C. Lane
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019976042X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
In the tradition of Kathleen Norris, Terry Tempest Williams, and Thomas Merton, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes explores the impulse that has drawn seekers into the wilderness for centuries and offers eloquent testimony to the healing power of mountain silence and desert indifference. Interweaving a memoir of his mother's long struggle with Alzheimer's and cancer, meditations on his own wilderness experience, and illuminating commentary on the Christian via negativa--a mystical tradition that seeks God in the silence beyond language--Lane rejects the easy affirmations of pop spirituality for the harsher but more profound truths that wilderness can teach us. "There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokeness we find within." It is this apparent paradox that lies at the heart of this remarkable book: that inhuman landscapes should be the source of spiritual comfort. Lane shows that the very indifference of the wilderness can release us from the demands of the endlessly anxious ego, teach us to ignore the inessential in our own lives, and enable us to transcend the "false self" that is ever-obsessed with managing impressions. Drawing upon the wisdom of St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhardt, Simone Weil, Edward Abbey, and many other Christian and non-Christian writers, Lane also demonstrates how those of us cut off from the wilderness might "make some desert" in our lives. Written with vivid intelligence, narrative ease, and a gracefulness that is itself a comfort, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes gives us not only a description but a "performance" of an ancient and increasingly relevant spiritual tradition.

Landscapes of the Sacred

Landscapes of the Sacred PDF Author: Belden C. Lane
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801868382
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
This substantially expanded edition of Belden C. Lane's Landscapes of the Sacred includes a new introductory chapter that offers three new interpretive models for understanding American sacred space. Lane maintains his approach of interspersing shorter and more personal pieces among full-length essays that explore how Native American, early French and Spanish, Puritan New England, and Catholic Worker traditions has each expressed the connection between spirituality and place. A new section at the end of the book includes three chapters that address methodological issues in the study of spirituality, the symbol-making process of religious experience, and the tension between place and placelessness in Christian spirituality.

American Camino

American Camino PDF Author: Kip Redick
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666916706
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Hikers have been walking the Appalachian Trail since 1948, when Earl Shaffer completed the first hike. Some hike just to enjoy the scenery, while others experience the trek as a spiritual journey. In American Camino: Walking as Spiritual Practice on the Appalachian Trail, Kip Redick engages in a phenomenological exploration of the relationship between long-distance hiking—in this case, hiking the Appalachian Trail—and spiritual pilgrimage. This book shows the way the Appalachian Trail concretizes existential connections between the hikers’ spiritual experiences and intersubjective relationships with various constituents on and around the trail: mountainous wilderness; its variation of flora, fauna, geology, and watershed; and social interactions with fellow hikers and with communities near the trail. Redick contrasts “spiritual rambling” with other approaches to hiking, such as scenic hikes where an experience of landscape is the focus, or a series of other aesthetic encounters that involve hikers’ connection with nature. This book interprets the Appalachian Trail as a site of spiritual journey and those who hike the wilderness trail as contemporary pilgrims.

Bigger and Wilder

Bigger and Wilder PDF Author: Jill Baker
Publisher: Sacristy Press
ISBN: 1789592968
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
An excursion into the ancient spiritual practice of pilgrimage from the perspective of loss and bereavement. Jill Baker encourages others to step into the pilgrim spirit and discover more about the big, wild God who constantly calls us to follow.

How to be a Failure and Still Live Well

How to be a Failure and Still Live Well PDF Author: Beverley Clack
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350030678
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
In consumer economies, success has increasingly been defined in terms of material attainment and the achievement of status. This model of 'the good life' and its formulas for success ignore the haunting possibility that one may not succeed and as a result be deemed 'a failure'. How to be a Failure and Still Live Well explores that often neglected theme of failure, not just as the opposite of achievement, but also, and more importantly, how it has been conflated with loss: that which haunts all transient, mortal human experience. Understanding loss as a form of failure affects our ability to cope with the everyday losses that permeate existence as a result of the natural processes of ageing, death, and decay. Engaging with loss and thinking about what it inevitability means for our lives and commitments, allows different values to emerge than those connected to success as attainment. Relationships, spontaneity, and generosity are explored as qualities that arise from taking seriously our vulnerability and that form the basis for richer accounts of what it might mean to 'live well'.

The Second Mountain

The Second Mountain PDF Author: David Brooks
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679645047
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Everybody tells you to live for a cause larger than yourself, but how exactly do you do it? The author of The Road to Character explores what it takes to lead a meaningful life in a self-centered world. “Deeply moving, frequently eloquent and extraordinarily incisive.”—The Washington Post Every so often, you meet people who radiate joy—who seem to know why they were put on this earth, who glow with a kind of inner light. Life, for these people, has often followed what we might think of as a two-mountain shape. They get out of school, they start a career, and they begin climbing the mountain they thought they were meant to climb. Their goals on this first mountain are the ones our culture endorses: to be a success, to make your mark, to experience personal happiness. But when they get to the top of that mountain, something happens. They look around and find the view . . . unsatisfying. They realize: This wasn’t my mountain after all. There’s another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain. And so they embark on a new journey. On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered. They want the things that are truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want. They embrace a life of interdependence, not independence. They surrender to a life of commitment. In The Second Mountain, David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose. In short, this book is meant to help us all lead more meaningful lives. But it’s also a provocative social commentary. We live in a society, Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom, that tells us to be true to ourselves, at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme—and in the process we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to repair is through making deeper commitments. In The Second Mountain, Brooks shows what can happen when we put commitment-making at the center of our lives.

Take Up Your Mat and Walk

Take Up Your Mat and Walk PDF Author: Mark Mah
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532604688
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
This book uses the metaphor of walking to gain insight into the spiritual life. Walking is the most basic movement of the human body. For many people, walking carries no value on its own except to transit between two points. From the spiritual perspective, we can derive many benefits through the act of walking. As a spiritual discipline, walking not only has health benefits but generates different states of well-being that are good for the human soul and spirit. Walking gives us pleasure, joy, happiness, and serenity. Metaphorically speaking, walking gives us a sense that we are on a journey with God. It also helps us to know the importance of engaging our physical bodies in our spirituality. It keeps us attuned to the present moment, cultivates in us a sense of wonder in the natural world, creates an inner space in our cluttered lives, highlights the need for solitude and silence, and gives us the freedom of simplicity that the soul enjoys.