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The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality
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 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.
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 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.
282 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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August 20, 2010
I geek out over Belden Lane's work. Truly, I do.
I read this book slowly, taking small bites and sometimes smiling, laughing out loud, tearing up, or just nodding, all the while finding myself looking around for someone else that I could show it to, share it with, and point out pieces and passages within it. Most of the time, I couldn't, and when I did find a listening ear, I found that most of what Lane is discussing that I was trying to rephrase is more experiential, and indeed, word-stripping and rendering speechless, than something easily systematized. I'm thankful for that.
Prof. Lane's an oddity in the sense that I don't see him talked about too much outside of decidedly esoteric circles. He delves into geography's influence upon spirituality and theology - a theology of place, if you will. Philip Sheldrake is another fellow who's worked in this area, and from bibliographies of the classes Lane teaches at Saint Louis University and those of the smattering of books Lane has written (only two that I can find, along with a tape series from the late 1990's about storytelling and ministry and a handful of wonderful articles in publications like Theology Today, Spirituality Today, and Spiritus). Not a prolific publisher, per say, but what he has published is quality, deep, and warmly readable. I'd emailed him to let him know that I enjoyed his work, and he'd mentioned working jointly in the arena of male spirituality and male initiation with none other than Richard Rohr, which made me grin.
This book specifically explores the influence wilderness, barren terrain, mountains, and desert has had/continues to have upon Christian spirituality and theology, discussing everything and everyone from the Desert Fathers to Mt. Sinai to Lane's experience while writing the book of journey to these places even as his heart journeyed alongside his mother in her increasing desert of Alzheimer's. A powerful book, and a beautiful one. I'd like to have multiple copies around simply to give it to folks who should read it.
I read this book slowly, taking small bites and sometimes smiling, laughing out loud, tearing up, or just nodding, all the while finding myself looking around for someone else that I could show it to, share it with, and point out pieces and passages within it. Most of the time, I couldn't, and when I did find a listening ear, I found that most of what Lane is discussing that I was trying to rephrase is more experiential, and indeed, word-stripping and rendering speechless, than something easily systematized. I'm thankful for that.
Prof. Lane's an oddity in the sense that I don't see him talked about too much outside of decidedly esoteric circles. He delves into geography's influence upon spirituality and theology - a theology of place, if you will. Philip Sheldrake is another fellow who's worked in this area, and from bibliographies of the classes Lane teaches at Saint Louis University and those of the smattering of books Lane has written (only two that I can find, along with a tape series from the late 1990's about storytelling and ministry and a handful of wonderful articles in publications like Theology Today, Spirituality Today, and Spiritus). Not a prolific publisher, per say, but what he has published is quality, deep, and warmly readable. I'd emailed him to let him know that I enjoyed his work, and he'd mentioned working jointly in the arena of male spirituality and male initiation with none other than Richard Rohr, which made me grin.
This book specifically explores the influence wilderness, barren terrain, mountains, and desert has had/continues to have upon Christian spirituality and theology, discussing everything and everyone from the Desert Fathers to Mt. Sinai to Lane's experience while writing the book of journey to these places even as his heart journeyed alongside his mother in her increasing desert of Alzheimer's. A powerful book, and a beautiful one. I'd like to have multiple copies around simply to give it to folks who should read it.
August 11, 2020
As Lane recognizes, this book is unusual. Lane was an academic of theological and American studies at St. Louis University. (He's now retired, I believe.) So on the one hand, "The Solace of Fierce Places" is a typical academic's book, rich in research and reading, packed with analysis and argument. I found myself marking almost every footnote as containing a reference to look up, a book or article to read. At the same time, though, "Solace" presents Lane's struggle to come to terms with the deaths of his parents. His mother is relegated to a nursing home as Alzheimer's consumes her; his father died in a violent incident when he was 13, cutting short his childhood.
The parts sometimes fit neatly together, sometimes jar a bit. In dealing with his mother's lingering death, stretched out over three years, Lane constructs a "desert world" for her out of her isolation in her room and withdrawal into her self; he sees her experience as a journey bringing her closer to God and God's love, using his own time in desert environments and his exceptionally wide reading in Christian desert literature to fashion this ending for her.
As Lane himself sees, there is no way to validate his construct in his mother's own experience of her drawn-out passing. When, toward the end of the book, she speaks for herself, she believes she is riding a train. Lane plays along, and recalls his own first train ride, at age 7; the two experiences meld, Lane almost taking over as his own his mother's. But there is a small but striking detail whose implications Lane misses. Asked where the train's headed, she says, "I don't know." These three words undermine the journey to God that Lane has built out of the end of her life: the one time she accounts for herself, God has nothing to do with it.
But the personal side of "Solace" isn't really about Lane's mother, though she recurs throughout. It's really about the loss of his father. (A spoiler follows.) He died of a gunshot when as Lane entered his teen years -- perhaps murdered in connection with a bank robbery, but more likely of suicide. This revelation, which clearly caused Lane great suffering to admit, explains the trajectory of the book: his search for God's love in an empty landscape, for a God who is hidden, who purposefully refuses to reveal himself, can be read as simply a search for a father -- a father who will not disappear, who will always be there and love the son, and who will help him become a man.
The hard emptiness of the desert is simply the landscape of an absent father, a site of suffering, which, once mastered by indifference (Lane's translation for the Greek "apatheia"), will uncover that hidden figure.
"Solace," then, is a confessional married to a scholarly study. I don't mean to demean the confessional aspects: Lane was very brave to put his deeply personal struggles out there. But no objective reader will miss the "search for the missing father" theme, which Lane edges toward seeing himself, but doesn't quite want to admit. God the Father is very much the goal and hope.
Lane is a devotee of the "via negativa," the strand in Christian theology that denies the possibility of capturing any of God's attributes in words. For many early (and later) Christian adherents, this imposed silence; if there is nothing to say, then why speak? Of course, this didn't prevent plenty of Lane's predecessors -- many of whom he cites -- from writing, some at length, nor Lane himself. The problem with this view, which afflicts "Solace" too, is the temptation to go ahead and describe God anyway. The most jarring instance here comes in the unnumbered chapter on God's "playfulness." God likes to play hide-and-seek and he likes to laugh at the game, with the relish of a little child. What is this but an attribution to God of a human characteristic easily captured in language? It's a refutation of the "via negativa," indeed an embracing of the "via positiva" which Lane abjures, and sometimes even criticizes, elsewhere.
Lane has plenty of company in this problematic. Christianity has always struggled with theodicy, with how to talk about God, with what a "personal relationship" with God consists in, and so on. Lane has little truck or patience with American Christians' easy-going relationship with the deity, especially the happy-talk version of Christianity that has taken over middle-class evangelicalism. He prefers -- and clearly thinks is correct -- the hard road he lays out through fierce landscapes to attain, at the end, a genuine connection with the "Deus absconditus" (who is at the same time the "pater absconditus"). Perhaps, though, we should not be so quick to judge. If God really is hidden, if he's playing hide-and-seek with us, then shouldn't we each be allowed to find our own path to his den? Why, in the end, really, is the version found in many Sunday meetings of joyful singing to be scorned in favor of the hard road? One version of the Christian path Lane completely ignores is that of many predominantly African-American congregations, whose celebrations of God have nothing to do with hard desert trails and silence but instead are joyous, even rambunctious, celebrations of delight and happiness. Their historical connection is not to fourth-century Egyptian asceticism but to the God who comforted them in bondage and then led them out and continues to support them and their communities in the striving for justice and equality. Lane is a deeply moral and decent man, and I am sure he meant no harm in ignoring this tradition; indeed, you can argue that it has little or nothing to do with the project he set for himself. Except: that his road is far from the only one available in the tradition, and there are very good reasons others might find far more appeal in other roads to God.
The parts sometimes fit neatly together, sometimes jar a bit. In dealing with his mother's lingering death, stretched out over three years, Lane constructs a "desert world" for her out of her isolation in her room and withdrawal into her self; he sees her experience as a journey bringing her closer to God and God's love, using his own time in desert environments and his exceptionally wide reading in Christian desert literature to fashion this ending for her.
As Lane himself sees, there is no way to validate his construct in his mother's own experience of her drawn-out passing. When, toward the end of the book, she speaks for herself, she believes she is riding a train. Lane plays along, and recalls his own first train ride, at age 7; the two experiences meld, Lane almost taking over as his own his mother's. But there is a small but striking detail whose implications Lane misses. Asked where the train's headed, she says, "I don't know." These three words undermine the journey to God that Lane has built out of the end of her life: the one time she accounts for herself, God has nothing to do with it.
But the personal side of "Solace" isn't really about Lane's mother, though she recurs throughout. It's really about the loss of his father. (A spoiler follows.) He died of a gunshot when as Lane entered his teen years -- perhaps murdered in connection with a bank robbery, but more likely of suicide. This revelation, which clearly caused Lane great suffering to admit, explains the trajectory of the book: his search for God's love in an empty landscape, for a God who is hidden, who purposefully refuses to reveal himself, can be read as simply a search for a father -- a father who will not disappear, who will always be there and love the son, and who will help him become a man.
The hard emptiness of the desert is simply the landscape of an absent father, a site of suffering, which, once mastered by indifference (Lane's translation for the Greek "apatheia"), will uncover that hidden figure.
"Solace," then, is a confessional married to a scholarly study. I don't mean to demean the confessional aspects: Lane was very brave to put his deeply personal struggles out there. But no objective reader will miss the "search for the missing father" theme, which Lane edges toward seeing himself, but doesn't quite want to admit. God the Father is very much the goal and hope.
Lane is a devotee of the "via negativa," the strand in Christian theology that denies the possibility of capturing any of God's attributes in words. For many early (and later) Christian adherents, this imposed silence; if there is nothing to say, then why speak? Of course, this didn't prevent plenty of Lane's predecessors -- many of whom he cites -- from writing, some at length, nor Lane himself. The problem with this view, which afflicts "Solace" too, is the temptation to go ahead and describe God anyway. The most jarring instance here comes in the unnumbered chapter on God's "playfulness." God likes to play hide-and-seek and he likes to laugh at the game, with the relish of a little child. What is this but an attribution to God of a human characteristic easily captured in language? It's a refutation of the "via negativa," indeed an embracing of the "via positiva" which Lane abjures, and sometimes even criticizes, elsewhere.
Lane has plenty of company in this problematic. Christianity has always struggled with theodicy, with how to talk about God, with what a "personal relationship" with God consists in, and so on. Lane has little truck or patience with American Christians' easy-going relationship with the deity, especially the happy-talk version of Christianity that has taken over middle-class evangelicalism. He prefers -- and clearly thinks is correct -- the hard road he lays out through fierce landscapes to attain, at the end, a genuine connection with the "Deus absconditus" (who is at the same time the "pater absconditus"). Perhaps, though, we should not be so quick to judge. If God really is hidden, if he's playing hide-and-seek with us, then shouldn't we each be allowed to find our own path to his den? Why, in the end, really, is the version found in many Sunday meetings of joyful singing to be scorned in favor of the hard road? One version of the Christian path Lane completely ignores is that of many predominantly African-American congregations, whose celebrations of God have nothing to do with hard desert trails and silence but instead are joyous, even rambunctious, celebrations of delight and happiness. Their historical connection is not to fourth-century Egyptian asceticism but to the God who comforted them in bondage and then led them out and continues to support them and their communities in the striving for justice and equality. Lane is a deeply moral and decent man, and I am sure he meant no harm in ignoring this tradition; indeed, you can argue that it has little or nothing to do with the project he set for himself. Except: that his road is far from the only one available in the tradition, and there are very good reasons others might find far more appeal in other roads to God.
December 6, 2010
This man is amazing. He goes back and forth between the desolation of his mother's battle with illness and his times of solitude in monasteries around the globe. The writing is amazing .. a bit academic at times but still wonderful. I learned so much about the dark night of the soul from Belden Lane.
July 5, 2014
I felt there was too much repetition, not a kind of spiral movement by which more and more of the author's thought is disclosed, but mere repetition of the fundamental (and unique, it seems) thought: "desert teaches abandonment". I liked the chapter on desert fathers most, and also the dialectics of the indifference (to all that is not important) and attentiveness (to the very few things that are important). Well; the subject is immensely worthy, as any pratictioner of silent prayer would confirm, but the book as such is not first class writing, I am afraid.
August 16, 2024
(3rd read) Discover new things and am reminded of important things each time I read it. Very helpful in contemplating the relinquishment the spiritual life requires at different life stages.
(2nd read) Reread as Lenten discipline and just as rich as the first time through. This time of coronavirus can be interpreted as a wilderness experience spiritually...this book helps embrace those types of experiences.
(1st read):This is a wonderfully well-written book that I found very helpful in sorting out issues in my own soul. The author weaves an exploration of the tradition of Christian desert and mountain spirituality with descriptions and experiences of different actual fierce landscapes such as Mount Sinai, Ghost Ranch, and Christ in the Desert Monastery and his own process of grief in the deaths of his father and mother to form a rich and thoughtful narrative of his own journey. Highly recommended.
"There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokenness we find within. Moving apprehensively into the desert's emptiness ,up the mountain's height, you discover in wild terrain a metaphor of your deepest fears. If the danger is sufficient, you experience a loss of competence, a crisis of knowing that brings you to the end of yourself, to the only true place where God is met." (216)
"How much can you give up? the desert asks. And how much can you love? Only in offering the severest answers to these two questions does one ever discover, at last, the solace of fierce landscapes." (230)
(2nd read) Reread as Lenten discipline and just as rich as the first time through. This time of coronavirus can be interpreted as a wilderness experience spiritually...this book helps embrace those types of experiences.
(1st read):This is a wonderfully well-written book that I found very helpful in sorting out issues in my own soul. The author weaves an exploration of the tradition of Christian desert and mountain spirituality with descriptions and experiences of different actual fierce landscapes such as Mount Sinai, Ghost Ranch, and Christ in the Desert Monastery and his own process of grief in the deaths of his father and mother to form a rich and thoughtful narrative of his own journey. Highly recommended.
"There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokenness we find within. Moving apprehensively into the desert's emptiness ,up the mountain's height, you discover in wild terrain a metaphor of your deepest fears. If the danger is sufficient, you experience a loss of competence, a crisis of knowing that brings you to the end of yourself, to the only true place where God is met." (216)
"How much can you give up? the desert asks. And how much can you love? Only in offering the severest answers to these two questions does one ever discover, at last, the solace of fierce landscapes." (230)
Read
August 10, 2020Part survey of wilderness in religious traditions, part theology, part memoir of grief. Parts were very easy to read and, others were very hard (or even dull). Many of the points were either subtle or non-existent at times. That said, there are still parts I'm mulling over.
January 16, 2016
Lane explores the parallels between the desolate places of our world and the desolate moments in our lives. Both are marked by uncomfortable silences. In the moments that we most desperately long to hear from God sometimes there is silence. This much I can affirm.
Yet Lane's theology collapses on itself. While I am comfortable reading many mystics, Lane pushes for a spirituality that transcends words (and possibly even religions?...) Certainly there are elements of God that are beyond knowing, but Lane seems to think that we can't know much of anything about God. Apophatic theology (the perspective he writes from) speaks of God only in terms of negation.
This is troubling and tragic for so many reasons. Furthermore, it is logically inconsistent which is why this book falls flat. Lane has done what his theology dictated - written a book of no substance.
So what can we do in the deserts of life? My encouragement (not Lane's) is to remember the ways God has revealed himself, remember the moments he has spoken, and cling to his goodness when we can no longer see him or hear him.
Yet Lane's theology collapses on itself. While I am comfortable reading many mystics, Lane pushes for a spirituality that transcends words (and possibly even religions?...) Certainly there are elements of God that are beyond knowing, but Lane seems to think that we can't know much of anything about God. Apophatic theology (the perspective he writes from) speaks of God only in terms of negation.
This is troubling and tragic for so many reasons. Furthermore, it is logically inconsistent which is why this book falls flat. Lane has done what his theology dictated - written a book of no substance.
So what can we do in the deserts of life? My encouragement (not Lane's) is to remember the ways God has revealed himself, remember the moments he has spoken, and cling to his goodness when we can no longer see him or hear him.
April 9, 2016
Reading this is almost like taking a continuing education course in Spirituality and Self-Care for the Modern person. Lane never makes himself out to be a spiritual master, but he references about 50 people whom he would give that label. The reader journey's with Lane then into his own spiritual landscape as informed by all those encountered in his studies. Moreover, the depth of spiritual growth he seeks is so much harder to arrive at and rich to search for than much of today's pop-spirituality. Lane makes spirituality less about me and finding a comforting peace. And more about deeply trolling through the silence to find a truly great God, despite ourselves that we may go out to others. Thus, it is in keeping with his Reformed heritage, though it doesn't often access it. I think this is best explored in steady small bits, rather than in heaping sojourns.
October 29, 2014
Upon finishing The Solace of Fierce Landscapes I immediately wanted to read it again. Belden's work starts out very academic - he is a professor - but his meticulous research woven with story-telling ultimately reveals the power, depth, intricacies, nuances, and inspirations of mountain and desert symbolism in the Christian tradition, and in a universally spiritual sense that is accessible to all. I finished this book feeling like I had been given sips of water along the way of the long desert journey that is life. I look forward to delving deeper a second time, savoring the work's complexities, and its nourishing inspiration.
July 14, 2012
Liked this book a lot and could see reading it over and over again at various stages of life. It is, however, very heavy. There were a few times when I really wished for some levity. I kept on, though, because that seems to be one of the main points of the book, to push on even when it is hard or when it is arid. Was ultimately glad I did.
January 15, 2016
I loved this book, and how Belden Lane drew deeply from the deserts and mountains, but also from the Mystics... From the Desert Mothers and Fathers, to C.S. Lewis to Edward Abbey, Terry Tempest Williams to Wendell Berry to Thomas Merton. And I'm continuing to roll around the idea of an indifferent God who is also wildly filled with love. There is so much here.
March 5, 2015
Meditations on wilderness, prayer, self, God, and death. Written as his own mother was dying in a nursing home, and as he faces the death of his father, when he was just a child, for truly the first time. A modern companion to the writings of the ancient desert father and mothers.
May 7, 2009
Begun. Paused. Maybe I'll get to it. Once you get apophasis there's not a lot left.
July 19, 2012
Dense, difficult read at times, like traversing the landscapes described.
June 3, 2016
This book combined an in depth study of desert spirituality with the author's own personal journey. I liked it, but it's not for the faint of heart.
April 23, 2019
This was for me an exceedingly rich book, one which bears much more quiet reflection. It wouldn't even have come on my "radar", had not the young rector of our parish joined in a backpack tour of "fierce landscapes" in the Southwest with a whole group of other women clergy last year. Part of their priming for the trip was to read, among other material, this book by Belden Lane. The rector mentioned it in the parish newsletter, & I'm certainly grateful that she did.
Lane's description of what he's about is quite clear: "The book is organized after a classic pattern in the history of Christian spirituality, the three stages of the spiritual life generally described as purgation, illumination, and union. These are symbolized, respectively, in the experience of the desert, the mountain, and the cloud." Inspired by his own experiences in physical desert & mountain settings as well as in inner deserts such as the death of parents, one's fears, one's brokenness, the poverty & need of others, etc., Lane follows the themes of attentiveness & indifference which he sees as "the constructive & deconstructive poles of the spiritual life." As a result of all this, he concedes (several times throughout the book) that "We are saved in the end by the things that ignore us." -- including the Deity, by whatever name we know that Being. Among the many statements which I appreciated by Lane was this one: "One of the scourges of our age is that all our deities are house-broken and eminently companionable. Far from demanding anything, they ask only how they can more meaningfully enhance the lives of those they serve."
Lane concludes the book by saying: "Where, then, does one look for the moral and social equivalent of desert in our world today? Not only in a geography where rain is scarce and people few, but also in the deserted, abandoned centers of our major cities -- the fearful places avoided as much as possible by those of us who can afford to live elsewhere. There and in nursing homes or hospices, deserted places where emptiness and death can't be denied as easily as they are in bustling centers of activity and power. These are the deserts to which we're invited to attend."
Lane's description of what he's about is quite clear: "The book is organized after a classic pattern in the history of Christian spirituality, the three stages of the spiritual life generally described as purgation, illumination, and union. These are symbolized, respectively, in the experience of the desert, the mountain, and the cloud." Inspired by his own experiences in physical desert & mountain settings as well as in inner deserts such as the death of parents, one's fears, one's brokenness, the poverty & need of others, etc., Lane follows the themes of attentiveness & indifference which he sees as "the constructive & deconstructive poles of the spiritual life." As a result of all this, he concedes (several times throughout the book) that "We are saved in the end by the things that ignore us." -- including the Deity, by whatever name we know that Being. Among the many statements which I appreciated by Lane was this one: "One of the scourges of our age is that all our deities are house-broken and eminently companionable. Far from demanding anything, they ask only how they can more meaningfully enhance the lives of those they serve."
Lane concludes the book by saying: "Where, then, does one look for the moral and social equivalent of desert in our world today? Not only in a geography where rain is scarce and people few, but also in the deserted, abandoned centers of our major cities -- the fearful places avoided as much as possible by those of us who can afford to live elsewhere. There and in nursing homes or hospices, deserted places where emptiness and death can't be denied as easily as they are in bustling centers of activity and power. These are the deserts to which we're invited to attend."
October 24, 2020
This scholarly treatment of meditative spirituality benefits from the author’s extensive reading of Christian apophatic traditions (ascetics.) Lane draws counter-intuitive conclusions about the benefits of “nothing” to the person who seeks a closer walk with God. He also draws on his travel experiences in the deserts and mountains of North America, Middle East, and Europe. I found the book to be helpful in opening my mind to new ways of understanding our relationship to God. I liked what he reveals about the allure of imaginary places, the central importance of a life of prayer, and the important distinction between one’s “work” and one’s “job.”
Two main critiques: (1) I just could not buy Lane’s overstatements regarding the connection between “love” and asceticism. Lane concludes that one cannot “realize God’s love at the heart of one’s being” without ascetical experiences in the environments of fierce landscapes. Really? He states that compassion and justice are the fruit of “indifference.” Perhaps for certain people who are already self-consumed by their own egos, these are correctives that open one to an understanding of God’s love and how to emulate it in one’s own life. But surely not every follower of Jesus is consigned to lack of love because they have not sought God in desert or mountain environments? Or are not yet “indifferent” to everything?
(2) I looked for more guidance in the practical steps one can take to benefit from their sojourn in fierce landscapes. Surely it is more than just being somewhere where there is “nothing”? Even the famous desert ascetics survived because of their connections to community, but such connections do not seem to play a central role in Lane’s theology of landscapes. Perhaps this is Lane’s intention, to send me out into my nearby desert landscapes with no more direction that “Go and experience it.” This also would be counter-intuitive to our normal way of learning, which is by benefiting from the experiences, mistakes, and discoveries of others. It takes at least two to be a disciple, and the importance of community remained mostly hidden in Lane’s book. The book is still a worthwhile read.
Two main critiques: (1) I just could not buy Lane’s overstatements regarding the connection between “love” and asceticism. Lane concludes that one cannot “realize God’s love at the heart of one’s being” without ascetical experiences in the environments of fierce landscapes. Really? He states that compassion and justice are the fruit of “indifference.” Perhaps for certain people who are already self-consumed by their own egos, these are correctives that open one to an understanding of God’s love and how to emulate it in one’s own life. But surely not every follower of Jesus is consigned to lack of love because they have not sought God in desert or mountain environments? Or are not yet “indifferent” to everything?
(2) I looked for more guidance in the practical steps one can take to benefit from their sojourn in fierce landscapes. Surely it is more than just being somewhere where there is “nothing”? Even the famous desert ascetics survived because of their connections to community, but such connections do not seem to play a central role in Lane’s theology of landscapes. Perhaps this is Lane’s intention, to send me out into my nearby desert landscapes with no more direction that “Go and experience it.” This also would be counter-intuitive to our normal way of learning, which is by benefiting from the experiences, mistakes, and discoveries of others. It takes at least two to be a disciple, and the importance of community remained mostly hidden in Lane’s book. The book is still a worthwhile read.
January 25, 2019
In The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, author Belden C. Lane creates a physical setting of the desert for the spiritual work that takes place when we seek a holy detachment from all of the distractions created by external circumstances of our everyday life. Lane repeatedly warns against the temptation to romanticize the monastic work done in silence and solitude. Referring to the desert as a “geography of abandonment”, sets the stage as the place “where one confronts one’s inevitable loss of control, the inadequacy of language, the spectre of one’s own demise.” Lane posits that only in the poverty that comes with an exchange of self-determination for a holy indifference can the seeker can find the “naked intent” of prayer. In that prayer, we know our truest desire only as we release it to the control of a God we may or may not be able to see or hear. The end result of this kind of surrender, according to Lane, is the prized fruit of love. I especially enjoyed this book since the author weaves throughout his experience visiting the Monastery of Christ in the Desert which Brian and I visited during our road trip to New Mexico back in our own desert season of 2015.
February 5, 2024
Unlike the other books on Spiritual Formation
The desert asks two questions: “How much can you give up?”, and, “How much can you love?”
My goodness this book is unbelievably good. I stumbled over it and am beyond grateful that I did.
I don’t really know how to summarize this book, so I offer only the following thoughts. If you are searching for Christ but want to actually find Christ not just an experience of Christ, then this book may give you guidance on that.
Guiding in the way of silence, difficulty, sacrifice, embracing the ordinary and fleeing experiences of God for God himself are part of the journey towards the God known by the desert monks of Christian history.
The book is split into the familiar Franciscan model of formation of purgation, illumination and Union. Each section brilliant in its own way and yet together forming a profound book.
Read this book fast and slow. Read it as fast as you can and then read it again as slowly as you can. Both ways will help you. But if you do either I can’t imagine you won’t be impacted deeply by this work.
The desert asks two questions: “How much can you give up?”, and, “How much can you love?”
My goodness this book is unbelievably good. I stumbled over it and am beyond grateful that I did.
I don’t really know how to summarize this book, so I offer only the following thoughts. If you are searching for Christ but want to actually find Christ not just an experience of Christ, then this book may give you guidance on that.
Guiding in the way of silence, difficulty, sacrifice, embracing the ordinary and fleeing experiences of God for God himself are part of the journey towards the God known by the desert monks of Christian history.
The book is split into the familiar Franciscan model of formation of purgation, illumination and Union. Each section brilliant in its own way and yet together forming a profound book.
Read this book fast and slow. Read it as fast as you can and then read it again as slowly as you can. Both ways will help you. But if you do either I can’t imagine you won’t be impacted deeply by this work.
February 11, 2020
I loved the ideas in this book and was intrigued by the author's descriptions and experiences. The way he journeyed alongside his mother dying with cancer was relevant to me as my son now has cancer.
"The desert practices 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.
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."
"The desert practices 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.
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."
October 14, 2022
the interior journey
The presence of classic spiritual giants grant the language necessary to allow the encounter with desert and mountain to become a looking glass into one’s self. Then the concrete allurement to develop the habit of contemplative life and prayer. A song found in silence that pierces heart and history with the unconditional love of God. I would recommend it to those who have some familiarity with the classic rendition of spirituality and have a thirst born of a desert experience, perhaps similar to the author’s loss of a parent.
The presence of classic spiritual giants grant the language necessary to allow the encounter with desert and mountain to become a looking glass into one’s self. Then the concrete allurement to develop the habit of contemplative life and prayer. A song found in silence that pierces heart and history with the unconditional love of God. I would recommend it to those who have some familiarity with the classic rendition of spirituality and have a thirst born of a desert experience, perhaps similar to the author’s loss of a parent.
February 19, 2018
I expected this book to be an accessible/academic history of desert spirituality and monastic life, and there was some of this, but it was a bit more self-helpy and personal that I liked. He does a lot of theorizing too, which felt thin. I felt that he never went into great depth about the desert fathers or other traditions and seems to assume a lot of shared knowledge. Also significantly focused on the judeo-christian tradition, which is not surprising, but again, a little disappointing.
November 16, 2018
Belden Lane is a superlative writer. That said, the text of Fierce Landscapes is dense and slow reading, which makes it all the better to re-read passages, meditate, and learn.
In preparation and reverie for my New Mexico pilgrimage to Ghost Ranch and Christ in the Desert Monastery, an excellent choice.
In preparation and reverie for my New Mexico pilgrimage to Ghost Ranch and Christ in the Desert Monastery, an excellent choice.
December 22, 2020
This was a tough book to finish but only because I couldn't read without doing some deep thinking. My book looks like a hedgehog it's got so many sticky notes in it.
The book is a meditation on grief, but not just death or suffering. It's about how we must empty ourselves of ego and expectation to truly see our lives as more than a series of details.
The book is a meditation on grief, but not just death or suffering. It's about how we must empty ourselves of ego and expectation to truly see our lives as more than a series of details.
December 9, 2017
I loved his meditations and thoughts on deserts and mountains (and his curating of pretty much every other writer/thinker/theologians thoughts on the subject as well). I did not so much love his story with his mom. Overall I liked the format though and found lots of gems.
July 8, 2019
This book was recommended to me by a wise friend who is an author. Full disclosure it was a stretch for me. I had to look up words and read it slowly in chunks. But it was good to push myself to read out of my comfort zone and learn new thinking.
August 26, 2024
While I didn't read the entire book, I read enough excerpts for it to count as being read. :) It is a unique book that is reflective, stirring, and highly researched. I loved it and will likely come back to it to read it through in its entirety.
July 28, 2025
Easily my favorite book of the past year. I have found comfort, awe, wonder, painful pricks of the heart in the pages of this book that have served my soul well. I keep returning to this book and expect I will for many years.
August 4, 2017
One of my favorite writers on spiritual themes. Like his other books this one will be kept near by.
August 23, 2017
This is one to savor, just a page or two at time. Excellent, even provocative, reflections on finding God in barren places.
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