The Great Conversation: Nature and the Care of the Soul

Lane (Backpacking with the Saints), a former professor of theology at St. Louis University, makes a strong argument for connection between the natural and spiritual realms in this multidisciplinary travelogue-cum-memoir. As in his previous work, Belden features backpacking heavily, fierce natural landscapes (such as the Western Australian desert), and luminaries from world religions, including St. Francis, Laozi, and Baal Shem Tov. Lane opens on an unconventional note: he talks to trees and is in love with one, an elderly cottonwood near his home. That confession is the premise for a comprehensive argument based in both science and emotion: nature can and does communicate and teach, Lane writes, but humans have forgotten the language. Lane provides extensive footnotes that explore recent research on ecological systems that calls into question the definition of individual life and consciousness, citing Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Lives of Trees and David Quammen’s The Tangled Tree, among others. By combining memoir with the lives of saints and other spiritual figures, Lane provides a stimulating testament to the spiritual value of the natural world. [em](June) [/em]