The Wilderness of God

The Wilderness of God by Louth, Andrew. Paperback edition. ISBN: 9780687057702.

From the Desert Fathers to T. S. Eliot and the dark imagination of Thomas Hardy at Egdon Heath, the desert has occupied a special place in the Christian tradition. The Wilderness of God is a fascinating study of "desert spirituality" which shows that the desert can be experienced as a place both of real inspiration and of torture and desolation. Beginning with Charles de Foucauld, Andrew Louth shows how the appeal of the desert has been embraced by a variety of figures through the centuries until the present day. Two such figures are Julian of Norwich and St. John of the Cross. Louths work is an engrossing investigation which takes the reader through the attempts to discover the values of the desert in medieval anchorism; in the sixteenth-century Carmelite reform; in the Russian forest and in the experience of mental desolation in the lives of such people as Pere Surin and Pere Huvelin. The Wilderness of God brings to life the rich imagery of the desert which can be found in the Bible and the liturgy, in poetry and prose. In all its forms, the wilderness emerges as a tradition that goes back to the very limits of what is humanly possible, and there, "somewhere on the other side of despair", discerns "the city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God".