The Stories of Belief: How Storytellers Engage the Wilderness

From biblical to contemporary times, the wilderness has been a source of inspiration, creation, and story. Poets, prophets, saints, and storytellers have considered how the forests, wetlands, and deserts of the wilderness have been both fearful and sacred spaces--and how that tension aptly captures the unknown and surprising elements of belief.

In this event, Nick Ripatrazone, Culture Editor of Image Journal and author of the new book, Wild Belief: Poets and Prophets in the Wilderness (Fortress), will speak with Bran Potter, professor emeritus of Geology and Environmental Studies at Sewanee, and Jennifer Michael, English Department chair at Sewanee about how the tradition of the wilderness as a place and source of story is essential to our understanding of faith.

 During this event we will consider a broad range of wilderness storytellers: John the Baptist and Jesus, the Desert Fathers, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, as well as contemporary writers like Wendell Berry, Terry Tempest Williams, Jim Harrison, Mary Oliver, W.S. Merwin, and Toni Morrison. As we consider the ways in which these storytellers search for the divine in the wilderness, we will see how stories of the wilderness are not only fundamental to faith, but a source of an especially fertile spirituality.