Are we drawn to landscapes that echo the symptoms of our soul? Desert spirituality knows that the God of the vast spaces is an experience of the sacred where we can find ourselves completely undone, stripped of our usual protective identities and driven to awe-filled silence. Safer images and experiences of God are disrupted by the God of wild imagination we find in the wilderness. Author and theologian, Belden Lane joins Peter, Dom and Sue in a conversation that traverses the inner terrain of love, loss and beauty even as it imaginatively takes us in wonder to canyons and forests, deserts and rivers which all reveal the God who may be found always speaking in and through creation, the first sacred book. 

Belden C. Lane is Professor Emeritus of Theological Studies, American Religion, and History of Spirituality at Saint Louis University. His interests include the relationship between geography and faith, wilderness backpacking in the Ozarks, the magic of storytelling and desert spirituality. He is author of many books including “Backpacking with the Saints: Wilderness Hiking as Spiritual Practice” and “The Great Conversation: Nature and the Care of the Soul"