Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality

Belden C. Lane

4.25 · Rating details · 292 ratings · 52 reviews

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, meditati ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 282 pages

Published February 1st 2007 by Oxford University Press (first published 1998)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.25 ·

Rating details

· 292 ratings · 52 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality

May 28, 2009 Adam rated it it was amazing

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 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. ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Aug 11, 2020 Gary Reger rated it liked it

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 deat 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.
...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Dec 06, 2010 Nita rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Feb 12, 2015 Kenny rated it it was amazing

Shelves: spirituality, nature-creation, contemplative-spirituality, pastoral-theology, ecology

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.

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, ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jun 23, 2014 Marianna rated it it was ok

Shelves: christianity, prayer

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 confir ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Aug 09, 2020 Dakota added it

Shelves: theology

Part 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. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Nov 04, 2015 Sean Post rated it did not like it

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, b ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 15, 2016 David A-S rated it liked it

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 ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 23, 2012 Alison rated it it was amazing

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 j ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jul 05, 2012 Leslie Klingensmith rated it really liked it

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.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 05, 2016 Susan Halvor rated it it was amazing

Shelves: environment, memoir, spirituality-theology

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. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Sep 23, 2014 Heidi rated it liked it · review of another edition

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.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

May 04, 2009 Daniel rated it liked it

Begun. Paused. Maybe I'll get to it. Once you get apophasis there's not a lot left. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jul 19, 2012 Frederick rated it it was amazing

Dense, difficult read at times, like traversing the landscapes described.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

May 13, 2015 Angela Joyce rated it it was amazing

Shelves: faith-in-general

This needs to be read slowly, in quiet moments of solitude... and it is worth taking the time to do this.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

May 04, 2016 Kim rated it really liked it

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. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 23, 2019 Harry Allagree rated it it was amazing

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 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."

...more

flag Like · see review

Oct 23, 2020 Dave rated it really liked it

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 reve 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.
...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 25, 2019 Tamara Murphy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: selah-spiritual-direction, ministry-church-theology-spiritual, 2018

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 contro ...more

flag Like · see review

Feb 10, 2020 Jodie Pine rated it really liked it

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 ...more

flag Like · see review

Feb 18, 2018 Samuel Moss rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, american, philosophy, religious, nature, 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.

flag Like · see review

Nov 16, 2018 Gail Richmond rated it really liked it

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.

flag Like · see review

Dec 22, 2020 Jennifer Gyuricska rated it really liked it

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. ...more

flag Like · see review

Dec 08, 2017 Braeden rated it really liked it

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.

flag Like · see review

Jul 08, 2019 Christine rated it liked it

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.

flag Like · see review

Aug 04, 2017 Todd Putney rated it it was amazing

One of my favorite writers on spiritual themes. Like his other books this one will be kept near by.

flag Like · see review

Aug 23, 2017 Sam Eman rated it it was amazing

This is one to savor, just a page or two at time. Excellent, even provocative, reflections on finding God in barren places.

flag Like · see review

Sep 20, 2017 Aaron Terrazas rated it liked it

Weird, wandering, and overall too religious for my taste, but in fleeting moments, hauntingly beautiful. Worth reading.

flag Like · see review

Oct 11, 2018 Vivian rated it liked it

I found it quite biblical and steeped in religion.

flag Like · see review

Dec 22, 2018 John Wills rated it really liked it

Very deep, very moving, an educated perspective on grief.

flag Like · see review

« previous 1 2 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend It | Stats | Recent Status Updates

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Spirituality

24 users

Environment > Nature

12 users

Religion > Theology

9 users

Religion

9 users

Nonfiction

8 users

Autobiography > Memoir

7 users

Religion > Christianity

6 users

Christian

5 users

Environment

3 users

Biography Memoir

3 users

See top shelves…

About Belden C. Lane

Belden C. Lane

19 followers

Books by Belden C. Lane

Backpacking with the Saints: Wilderness Hiking as Spiritual Practice

Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality

The Great Conversation: Nature and the Care of the Soul

Ravished by Beauty: The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Spirituality

Desert Spirituality and Cultural Resistance: From Ancient Monks to Mountain Refugees

More…

Curated Reads: Nonfiction Books to Intrigue and Inspire

Discover lots of new and upcoming nonfiction reads this spring with our author interviews, articles, and book lists! Interviews with...

Trivia About The Solace of Fie...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from The Solace of Fie...

“Intimacy in all human relationships—especially with God—can occur only as vulnerability and inadequacy are owned.” — 7 likes

“Divine love is incessantly restless until it turns all woundedness into health, all deformity into beauty, all embarrassment into laughter. In biblical faith, brokenness is never celebrated as an end in itself.” — 4 likes

More quotes…

See a Problem?

Preview — The Solace of Fierce Landscapes by Belden C. Lane

The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Belden C. Lane

Books by Belden C. Lane

Related Articles

Trivia About The Solace of Fie...

Quotes from The Solace of Fie...

See a Problem?

Preview — The Solace of Fierce Landscapes by Belden C. Lane

The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Belden C. Lane

Books by Belden C. Lane

Related Articles

Trivia About The Solace of Fie...

Quotes from The Solace of Fie...

new topic
Discuss This Book