Soul Wilderness: A Desert Spirituality

By Kerry S. Walters

Book Overview

Stop playing it safe Too many Christians "play it safe," says the author, by settling for surface piety. If we dare go beneath conventionality and our carefully built images that make God nonthreatening, we can reawaken the mystic within each of us and have a direct experience with God. Using the tradition of the mystic emerging from the wasteland, the author helps guide our modern journey into our own inner desert. This psychic wilderness is terrifying yet welcoming, filled with danger and filled with promise; but it is only here that our inner demons can be fought and our souls reborn. We are then renewed as our original selves, fused with God. The author draws from scripture--especially John the Baptist, from Catholic and Orthodox mysticism, from theology, from philosophy, from literature, and from psychology--in particular Joseph Campbell's stages of the spiritual journey. The result is a beautifully written book that explores the prophetic vocation that's the destiny of every Christian. The book shows the way to purification, transformation, and confrontation with God. And because the essence of love is reaching out, the final step in the process of rebirth is to then journey back to the world to reach out in compassion to others. Soul Wilderness is personally challenging yet highly accessible reading, meant for Christians of all denominations, particularly spiritual seekers, those trying to balance contemplation with action, and anyone who meditates. It's also an extraordinary resource for religious and clergy, spiritual directors, retreat directors, and professors and students of spirituality, philosophy, or theology. +

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809140071
• ISBN13: 9780809140077
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: Paulist Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Disturbing and liberating

Walters has written a beautifully disturbing and liberating book. He makes mincemeat out of the comfortable spirituality and canned mysticism so popular in the religious marketplace today, and urges us to go into the inner desert with no provisions. Once there, he tells us that we'll die. That's the disturbing part. But Walters also argues (here's the liberating part) that in dying in the desert we discover who we really are and what's really important about God. If he's right, it seems a small price to pay. If you liked what Joseph Campbell did for the study of religion with his heroic journey approach, you'll like what Walters does for Christian belief in this book, because the whole book is really about the spiritual pilgrimage of Christians. But it also speaks to others (like myself) who don't claim to be Christian, but who are interested in mysticism and spirituality.

So beautiful it makes you shiver

A book that you'll want to read again and again. It challenges you to leave comfortable and easy gods behind and to journey into the frightening but awesome inner desert in search of the one true God. The insights are fantastic, but the writing is even better. Especially good is the last chapter, where Walters says that the mystic/prophet who comes back from the desert "crackles in the blue electricity" of the savage desert God. YES!!

A beautifully written book

A beautifully written, insightful, and most of all motivating book on the spiritual journey. After reading it, you want to finally let go all your dusty old religious beliefs and take off for the inner desert and fresh skies. Chapter five scares me to death, but in a good way. Read this book, and you'll never be the same again.

Best book on mysticism I've ever read!

This is the first book on spirituality I've ever read in one sitting (an all-nighter!), and I plan to read it again. It's a beautiful and insightful book, in spite of the author's modest claim that he's not a poet (he is, in this and his other books). Walters teaches us how to sink into the inner desert (the soul), discover our true selves and God there, and return to the world as prophets on fire with divine love. He says that human existence is a koan, a riddle that can only be cracked if we dare to go beyond the safe boundaries we've drawn for ourselves and jump into the desert. He's especially good at describing those "safe" places--all those "churchy" feel-good dens we burrow into to keep away from the fiery desert God. A frightening thought, but one (if he's right) that eventually frees us to become full fledged individuals. This book isn't for the timid--or maybe that's exactly who it's for. Reading Walters is a little like reading Kierkegaard. Be prepared to be shook up.

A book for really serious searchers

Soul Wilderness is one of the best books in spirituality I've read in the last ten years. Using Joesph Campbell's typology stages in the sacred journey, Walters shows how we can pass in and through our own inner deserts to discover and become one with God. The first and last chapters are particularly insightful: the first on the reasons we hesitate diving into our souls, the last on what it means to be a mystic/prophet. Reading this book could change your life. Its certainly in the same camp as anything Tom Merton or Henri Nouwen wrote.