Overview

Enduring lessons from the desert soundscapes that shaped the Christian monastic tradition. For the hermits and communal monks of antiquity, the desert was a place to flee the cacophony of ordinary life in order to hear and contemplate the voice of God. But these monks discovered something surprising in their harsh desert surroundings: far from empty and silent, the desert is richly reverberant. Sonorous Desert shares the stories and sayings of these ancient spiritual seekers, tracing how the ambient sounds of wind, thunder, water, and animals shaped the emergence and development of early Christian monasticism. Kim Haines-Eitzen draws on ancient monastic texts from Egypt, Sinai, and Palestine to explore how noise offered desert monks an opportunity to cultivate inner quietude, and shows how the desert quests of ancient monastics offer profound lessons for us about what it means to search for silence. Drawing on her own experiences making field recordings in the deserts of North America and Israel, she reveals how mountains, canyons, caves, rocky escarpments, and lush oases are deeply resonant places. Haines-Eitzen discusses how the desert is a place of paradoxes, both silent and noisy, pulling us toward contemplative isolation yet giving rise to vibrant collectives of fellow seekers. Accompanied by Haines-Eitzen’s evocative audio recordings of desert environments, Sonorous Desert reveals how desert sounds taught ancient monks about solitude, silence, and the life of community, and how they can help us understand ourselves if we slow down and listen.

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9780691259284

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"""A Seminary Co-Op Notable Book of the Year"" ""A meditative blend of history and travelogue . . . brings the soundscape of the desert to life."" * New Yorker * ""An engaging and inspiring book that provides much needed reflection on the significance of nature, sound, and silence in a noisy age.""---Elizabeth Orens, The Living Church ""[Sonorous Desert] is about the experience of solitude, sound, and silence in the ancient world and today. . . . These ideas are significant for current discussion of spirituality and human well-being."" * Choice *"

"""A Seminary Co-Op Notable Book of the Year"" ""Winner of the American Book Fest Best Book Award, Religion Category"" ""A meditative blend of history and travelogue . . . brings the soundscape of the desert to life."" * New Yorker * ""An engaging and inspiring book that provides much needed reflection on the significance of nature, sound, and silence in a noisy age.""---Elizabeth Orens, The Living Church ""[Sonorous Desert] is about the experience of solitude, sound, and silence in the ancient world and today. . . . These ideas are significant for current discussion of spirituality and human well-being."" * Choice *"

Author Information

Kim Haines-Eitzen is the Hendrix Memorial Professor of Early Christianity and Early Judaism at Cornell University. She is the author of The Gendered Palimpsest and Guardians of Letters. She appeared in National Geographic’s The Story of God with Morgan Freeman. She divides her time between Ithaca, New York, and the remote desert mountains of southeastern Arizona.

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