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Rating: 
Summary: Depressed midwestern view of deserts
Review: Mr. Lane and I share a love of the desert but that's where it ends. He has a romantic and sentimental view, from St. Lewis, of deserts as a good place to go when you're sad. He trys to be sad in St. Louis but it's just not the same. (If I was in St. Louis I'd be sad, maybe I should write a book about that.) If you're looking for a reason to go to the desert and be sad, then this is the book for you! Save your money and stay sad where you are; Please.
Rating:
Summary: fragments of soul
Review: Rather sad book which draws on his erudition and his personal experience. The background is interesting, but when he describes his experience with his mother`s decline and death, for me he descends into unconvincing sentimentality. I guess he should stick to the academic writing he is undoubtedly skilled in, as those are the best parts of the book. Little genuine experience of the relationship of the physical to the spiritual desert comes through for me with any conviction. I`m glad he survived;but it doesn`t share enough of his experience to enlighten me.
Rating: 
Summary: Since Muhammad couldn't go to the mountain.....
Review: Simply a very good read. One needn't be familiar with the traditions of the Desert Fathers, apophatic theology, or the Yamabushi warrior traditions of Japan to feel a kinship with this work. Rather, a very serious subject is treated with great respect and sensitivity. Composer Alan Hovaness writes, "Mountains are symbols of mankind's search for God," and Allen Ginsberg tells us, "Things are symbols for themselves." In this book, the mountain and the desert are allowed to both be symbols of the seeking soul and symbols of themselves--they are encountered as we internalize them in our quest, and they are encountered as they really are: cold, hard, lonely, and often dangerous. Mountains and deserts occur in cities as well. Should you find yourself struggling with one, this book may just be the companion you need.
Rating: 
Summary: A great book on spirituality and environment
Review: This book is a gem for anyone who appreciates monasticism and the beauty and spirituality of the desert. It contains some of the freshest theological insights I have come across in quite awhile.
Rating:
Summary: A great book on spirituality and environment
Review: This book is a gem for anyone who appreciates monasticism and the beauty and spirituality of the desert. It contains some of the freshest theological insights I have come across in quite awhile.
Rating:
Summary: Exploration of Apophatic Spirituality
Review: This is a most amazing book, impossible to classify. It is written on a number of levels at once; if you have read 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', which broke new ground twenty years or so ago, you will know what I mean. The whole book is about prayer, in one way or another; I found it marvellous and beautifully written. If you are a desert dweller, this one is for you. The exploration of desert and mountain landscapes goes hand in hand with a reading of the apophatic traditions of prayer. "The desert practice 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....In the practice of contemplation, one comes eventually to embrace an apophatic anthropology, letting go of everything one might have imagined as constituting the self - one's thoughts, one's desires, all one's compulsive needs. 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. One's self is ever a tenuous thing, discovered only in relinquishment. I recognize it finally as a vast, empty expanse opening out on to the incomparable desert of God". (pp 12-13) . . . "Apophatic spirituality has to start at the point where every other possibility ends. Whether we arrive there by means of a moment of stark extremity in our lives or (metaphorically) by way of entry into a high desert landscape, the sense of inadequacy remains the same. Prayer without words can only begin where loss is reckoned as total"
Rating:
Summary: Exploration of Apophatic Spirituality
Review: This is a most amazing book, impossible to classify. It is written on a number of levels at once; if you have read `Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', which broke new ground twenty years or so ago, you will know what I mean. The whole book is about prayer, in one way or another; I found it marvellous and beautifully written. If you are a desert dweller, this one is for you. The exploration of desert and mountain landscapes goes hand in hand with a reading of the apophatic traditions of prayer. "The desert practice 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....In the practice of contemplation, one comes eventually to embrace an apophatic anthropology, letting go of everything one might have imagined as constituting the self - one's thoughts, one's desires, all one's compulsive needs. 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. One's self is ever a tenuous thing, discovered only in relinquishment. I recognize it finally as a vast, empty expanse opening out on to the incomparable desert of God". (pp 12-13) . . . "Apophatic spirituality has to start at the point where every other possibility ends. Whether we arrive there by means of a moment of stark extremity in our lives or (metaphorically) by way of entry into a high desert landscape, the sense of inadequacy remains the same. Prayer without words can only begin where loss is reckoned as total"
Rating:
Summary: devastating desolation
Review: What a curious book this one is, joining three main narrative threads: spiritual journals of the author's experiences in desolate terrains, emotional journals of the author's mother's protracted and painful death, and historical chronicles of monastic places and practices. The candor, humility, and knowledge of the author is everywhere evident. Lane has as deep an awareness of theological writings as he has passionate appreciation for some fine desert writers (neither naturalists nor ecologists fits them better). I cannot say every page of this book provided easy going or smooth engagement, but that can hardly be said to be the point of the book. The author mentions the relative ordinariness of the lives of those who seek spiritual focus in these places. The ordinariness of these lives makes the strange ferocity of the surrounding landscapes more portentous. I came to this book seeking description of the fierce landscapes and was rewarded. The rest of the book made for bracing enrichment of the sort I can't say I commonly read (grief memoirs & theology).
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