Backpacking with the Saints Lib/E: Wilderness Hiking as Spiritual Practice

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 Hammarskjöld, and Thomas Merton, and as he walks, he engages their writings with the natural wonders he encounters, 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, 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.

Author: Jim Denison, Belden C. Lane
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: 07/31/2019
Binding Type: CD
ISBN: 9798200310739

About the Author
Denison, Jim: -

Jim Denison is an audiobook narrator and voice actor with over thirty years experience in professional public speaking, including five years as a radio personality.

Lane, Belden C.: - Belden C. Lane is a Presbyterian minister and Professor Emeritus of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University. His books include Backpacking with the Saints: Wilderness Hiking as Spiritual Practice, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality, and Ravished by Beauty: The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Spirituality.

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