The Wisdom of Wilderness: Experiencing the Healing Power of Nature | Gerald G. May

The Wisdom of Wilderness: Experiencing the Healing Power of Nature | Gerald G. May | "It is your wilderness calling." I plan to listen.

books:

The Wisdom of Wild...

	The Wisdom of Wilderness: Experiencing the Healing Power of Nature Gerald G. May HarperOne, 2006 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Tap into the Awe-Inspiring Power of Nature

THE LAST SPIRITUAL TESTAMENT OF A VERY WISE MAN

Gerald May, well known author of Addiction and Grace, was dying as he wrote this book. He leaves it to us as a last testament of the wisdom he gained not from his teachers, peers or patients, but from the wilderness within him and without. Recounting expeditions into nature over a five-year period, he shares with us what he experienced in the woods and on the water, how nature's lessons healed him finally at a deep level of his being, and how they might also heal us. He and we are one with that nature, not separate from it, whether to tame or destroy or protect. Nature herself heals the rift that can arise between her and us, and led him to accept its force within himself -- even fear, imperfection and dying -- exactly for what it is. May acquires a Zen-like openness to all things, an appreciation and acceptance of all things just as they are, a delight in and gratitude for all things, and of the force and power behind them. "Love," he writes, "is the pervading passion of all things that draws diversity into oneness, that knows and pleads for union, that aches for goodness and beauty, that suffers loss and destruction.... Love is the energy that fuels, fills, and embraces everything everywhere. And there is no end to it, ever." His insights are many: great and small, clear and subtle, well-known to solitary venturers into the wild and strikingly origianl with him. His perception into his own deep feeling is acute and his writing is exquisite. This book is a gift for us all, a special gift for those who appreciate nature or have, like May, spent time alone in it.

for more information click here

"It is your wilderness calling." I plan to listen.

It was September, and the long stretch of Lake Michigan island beach was deserted except for a herd of snowy swans cruising along the shore at sunset. I had just read THE WISDOM OF WILDERNESS by Gerald May before my solo backpack trip. As I took my last swim of the season and marveled at the beauty all around me, his words echoed. Wilderness, he believed, is not just a place. It is also a state of being. The inner wilderness, he wrote, "is the untamed truth of who you really are."

May knew he was dying as he penned THE WISDOM OF WILDERNESS, a book drawn from his journals and thoughts over the last decade of his life. Drawn to nature because of his deep longing for something he couldn't articulate --- but knew was wrapped in a yearning for God --- he spent many nights out of doors in a state forest close to his home. It was here that May's life was irrevocably changed, as he learned about himself and about God's presence.

The idea of going to the wilderness to learn spiritual truths is as old as humankind. It's even biblical. Think of Jesus going to pray in the desert, or the prophets who found metaphors in creation. Many of the early church fathers and mothers found solitude and a special sort of communion with God when they set themselves apart for a time in the wilderness. Although May uses language that may be difficult for Christians to get past (for example, he meets something called "The Power of the Slowing," which he calls a feminine presence), if we put aside some of our preconceptions about God, May allows us to see how God might work through nature to teach us truths about ourselves and work healing in our lives.

Like any of us who love to be alone in the outdoors, May writes of his battle with fear. Fear of the dark. Fear of wild animals (his encounter with a bear is one of the best moments in the book). Fear of other humans who might wish him ill. Letting himself deeply experience fear has an unexpected result: gratitude.

Indeed, this willingness to let ourselves feel deeply is at the heart of the book. May, a respected theologian and psychiatrist (ADDICTION & GRACE), had spent a lifetime helping people learn to "cope" with their feelings. In THE WISDOM OF WILDERNESS, he rethinks the idea of "coping" and wonders if in fact it isn't better to feel our emotions deeply. May wants us to look deeper at our own nature. Are we awake to our lives? Are we paying attention? What are we missing? What are we afraid of?

When we allow ourselves to feel deeply, we open ourselves up to pain. And there is pain in the book. May spends a chapter looking at pain through his story of a tortured turtle, a chapter that no one will be able to read without flinching. More importantly, May is aware of his own mortality as he battles cancer. This lends a terrific poignancy to his words. When dying, one is aware of what is most important. May doesn't have time to trivialize.

As one who loves field guides and putting names to the birds, flowers and clouds I see, I particularly appreciated May's chapter, "The Name of the Eagle," although I'm not sure I agree with him completely. He believes that part of our desire for naming things is a need for power or control (or he says "subjugation.") "A...more respectful way is not to give a name but to discover it," he writes. This chapter gave me plenty of food for thought, since I consider learning the names of things a form of respect and appreciation --- like learning the names of the people you want to know better. I appreciate his challenging words, however. Although I will continue to enjoy naming things, I'll remember his caution the next time I'm poring over my field guides, spending more time looking for a name than getting to know the birds or the flowers for themselves.

Perhaps most importantly, May reminds me to be attentive --- to stay awake to my life. As he writes in the preface: "Your experience may be very different than mine. Just as you find your wilderness in your own place, you will have your own experience of Presence there. But my guess is that you will be touched and moved by Something that is in you but yet not completely you, something dynamic, surprising, and very, very wise....it is your wilderness calling." I plan to listen.

--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby

for more information click here

The Wisdom of Jerry

This book was written with the last ounce of strength Jerry May had as he was dying of cancer. It is full of joy, humor, gentleness and beauty, and it is vintage Jerry. A beautiful book for those who love nature, beauty and the outdoors, and seek the divine in natural settings.

Spiritual Connection

I love this guy and wish with all my heart I could have met him. I connected immediately with this books message and read it all the way through. I love the wilderness and identified with everything Gerald May had to say in this little gem.

Answering "the call" of wild nature

There is much to like about Gerald (Jerry) May's The Wisdom of Wilderness. I too am greatly interested in notions of wilderness and wildness and appreciate May's reflections on our species' "estrangement" from larger, wild nature, and the fact that our western Euro-American culture all too often tries to tame, exploit, or manage "the natural world" even as we fear or ignore or deny the wildness within. I also appreciate that he risks writing about the invisibles or intangibles he discovered in the latter stages of his life, while answering "the call" of wilderness; and the fact that some aspect of larger nature might actually be perceived as welcoming. I too have sometimes had the experience of being drawn by nature out of myself and into something bigger. It's often said that wilderness - or, more generally, wild nature - is indifferent to the fate of humans. Yet at times in my life I have sensed something else. I don't know if it has been nature itself or something even "bigger" than nature, some creative force or energy. But I have felt accepted by what we call the natural world. Other ideas also resonate: the notion that we humans and other parts of nature are perfect in our imperfection; the value, even necessity, of solitude; the importance of being "vitally present"; the ability of wild nature to heal; the possibility that "all creation participates in creation"; and love's presence at the center of it all.

May describes his own calling and welcoming by different names. And though his description of "The Power of the Slowing" or "the Presence" or "the Wisdom of the Wild" is not quite like my own, I can sense the truth in his experience. At the same time, some of his accounts seem almost too facile, too pat, too simplistic; and occasionally, a little too "woo woo." Perhaps that has to do with the difficulty of describing intangibles and larger "Presences" or transcendent experiences. In any case, I wanted MORE. I also sometimes had trouble following his "leaps" in reasoning and found that he sometimes seems to contradict himself. For instance, he discusses the importance of accepting nature as it is, but then also writes that nature is "willing to become an imaginary enemy" so that humans might learn one lesson or another. That sort of idea seems to put humans back at the center of things. And in certain chapters, I wish May had dived deeper. For instance Chapter 6, "Violence at Smith's Inlet." While certain parts seemed overly dramatic, I think May missed an opportunity to explore his own complex relationship with the violence involved in sport fishing. Though his own participation in fishing resulted in considerable killing and wounding, he simply says, "It always bothered me, but I kept doing it." (Until, we learn in a later chapter, he simply stopped.) As an aside, I found his discussion of angling "one-upmanship" to be silly and irrelevant in this sort of book. I do greatly appreciate his argument that we need to look harder at - and accept - the "shadow" of humanity's violence. I just wish he'd gone deeper in this chapter. I also wish he followed through in his discussion of the human proclivity for naming; by the end of the chapter I wondered, what is his point?

One other comment: May - like many people in our culture - seems to equate wilderness and wildness. But as I note in my own book, Living with Wildness: An Alaskan Odyssey, wildness and wilderness are not at all the same, a point that Gary Snyder, Jack Turner, Paul Shepard, Wendell Berry, Roderick Nash, and many other American writers, historians, and philosophers have emphatically made, sometimes at great length. Wilderness is a place; and sometimes, an idea. Wildness, on the other hand, is a state of being. Wildness is present everywhere, including within us. As Jerry May himself puts it toward the end of his book, what he is really considering here is "the Wisdom of the Wild." It's a wisdom meriting our attention and openness.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2

products you might be interested in