Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality by Belden C. Lane
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In this calamitous year our connections to places and spaces have been heightened.  We were/are isolated in domestic spaces.  We walked our neighborhoods.  Many of us gardened and landscaped.  We also couldn't go to places that we enjoyed, found meaningful, that inspire or comfort us.  In religious communities there was the acute realization of the importance to many of us of the places we worship and fellowship and that online versions were but a pale and inadequate shadow creating significant spiritual loss.

I had enjoyed another Belden Lane book and this one has been sitting on my shelves to-read for a while.  This year seemed fitting.  I grabbed it and began it while three days of spiritual retreat in the Nebraska Sandhills at Kamp Kaleo, our denominational campground.

In this book Lane explores the particulars of American spiritualities of place and space. He opens with a discussion of how all sacred spaces are storied spaces. The vast middle section of the book examines various spiritual approaches to place from Native American to Catholic Worker. In this section I found two things particularly lacking--no examination of place/space in African-American spirituality or any discussion of what Eastern Religions have contributed to a sense of place (surely a discussion of Gary Snyder would have been easy?). I personally most enjoyed the chapter on the Puritans.

The book then concludes with the tension in Christian spirituality between a sacramental sense of place and an apophatic tradition that emphasizes transcendence of place. In this section he discusses the need to deconstruct the ways in which landscapes are always constructed (a brief discussion of Simon Schama's wonderful book Landscape and Memory). And how Christianity disciplines us to see the sacred in the places we want to ignore.

As I contemplate how to spiritually direct my people this winter, building on some work I did last spring, I can imagine a pilgrimmage in place, focusing on the interior life and attention to the details in our ordinary spaces. My mental wheels are turning.

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