Soul Wilderness: A Desert Spirituality

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.

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, 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.

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.

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.