Icons of Loss and Grace: Moments from the Natural World [Hardcover]

Susan Hanson (Author), Melanie Fain (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2004

"Whether Texas State University lecturer and lay Episcopal chaplain Susan Hanson is hiking with her students or grubbing alone in the alkaline soil of her small garden, she sees glimpses of God everywhere. . . . In careful prose that sings on the pages, Hanson eschews pat answers while inviting the reader to explore deeper spiritual truths."—Christianity Today "From the marmot in Colorado to the javelina of South Texas, from the False Dayflower in her yard to the palmettos in the Ottine swamp, from the Cooper's hawk to the cormorant—Hanson calmly and gracefully informs us. And she relates all of this to the humans who live with these and other things, things natural, every day, and wondrous."—Southwestern American Literature "Susan Hanson offers snapshots of all the natural glory that is Texas. Her kaleidoscope of words pixel together scenes of God in nature—be it in the small ramblings of a rolly polly, the flight of a butterfly or cardinal, maggots feasting on a roadkill possum or, especially, in the time-sacred act of gardening. . . . This book offers the best of a Walt Whitman flair for poetic natural observation translated into prose. . . .But, most importantly, this collection of "moments in time" offers a new set of new eyes with which to perceive Texas' vast—and minute—beauty.—Suzanne L. Moore, Times Record News "Susan Hanson finds comfort, meaning, and joy in the natural world—in the turning of the seasons, the growth of a seed, the flight of an owl. . . .Dip into it when you need to be heartened, grounded, and centered."—Lorraine Anderson It is through brief moments in our lives that the spiritual most often communicates itself. Fleeting as they are, these small encounters with the “familiar wild” instruct us in dealing with change and loss. They are the icons that point not so much to answers, but to a way of living in the tension between life and death. Each of these essays represents one moment. Most of them occur very close to home. There is nothing exotic about any of the landscapes Susan Hanson depicts—the oak mottes and scrub of the South Texas Plains, the rocks and rivers of Central Texas, the soil in her own backyard—yet these are the sorts of landscapes that teach and nurture all of us who care to see them. This way of seeing the world—as an undivided whole of the physical and the spiritual—is nutritive, healthful. The vision is partial, but all vision is partial, and it is in the pieces, the glimpses, the tastes, that we acquire a sense of the whole. Divided into three sections, the book addresses the questions of how we deal with change and loss in our lives. In “Innocence,” the essays are marked by a spirit of curiosity, wonder, and adventure. The middle section reflects a growing awareness of loss, both personal and in the natural world. In “Grace,” the final essays point toward the possibility of reconciliation with loss—a reconciliation mediated through nature. Written as reflections, rather than full-blown arguments, Icons of Loss and Grace offers no final resolution to the questions it presents. Yet in these essays we may recognize that delight and sorrow are soul mates, that loss and redemption are a part of the same sacred ground, and that pain can evolve into grace.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Texas Tech University Press (April 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0896725227
• ISBN-13: 978-0896725225
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,623,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seeing the Earth, Knowing Our Place, September 5, 2004

By 

Susan (Bertram, TX, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Icons of Loss and Grace: Moments from the Natural World (Hardcover)

Icons of Loss and Grace: Moments from the Natural World, is a collection of lyrical and profoundly personal reflections on life and place. In these lovely essays, Susan Hanson explores the relationship between the human world and the world of nature, between cultivated gardens and what she calls "the familiar wild," between the wilderness within and the wilderness without. Hers is a world of where sandhill cranes call to our most primal selves; where pulling henbit out of the flowerbed is a way of taking the earth's pulse; where no matter how sharp and bitter the loss, there is some sweetness, some goodness in it. She writes about butterflies and shooting stars above the Frio River, and real homeland security. She tells us that earthworms, at the threshold of winter, reinvent the world, and that the silence of a monastic retreat can teach us "that there is nothing left to say, and everything to learn." She takes a moment to watch and smile at two dung beetles who are playing their earnest roles in the "riotous recyling of all that falls to the earth." And as she touches an abandoned egg in an empty nest, she remembers Emily Dickenson's poem, "Hope is the thing with feathers."

Through these moments of deep attention to the world of nature, in prose that is profoundly simple deeply evocative, Susan Hanson helps to define her own nature, her own longings--and ours, as well. "Attention," she says. "What more do I have to give the world than that? What more can I do than say 'This matters, listen, look, engage'? What more is there to do?"

Just this, we are taught in Icons of Loss and Grace. Just this. It is the only lesson we need to learn.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Search For The Soul And A Oneness With Others., March 7, 2010

By 

Sparklingsusie (Hudson Valley,New York) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Icons of Loss and Grace: Moments from the Natural World (Hardcover)

Sometimes as we go through life we think others are totally separated from us but in reading this book I found just maybe there is a universal oneness which is brought through our experiences with nature. This author has a way with thoughts and words which I have never been able to express but surely have felt over and over while I was digging around nature in the backyard of this whole natural,spiritual world.

5.0 out of 5 stars Grace-full, July 9, 2009

By 

Dick Heaberlin - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Icons of Loss and Grace: Moments from the Natural World (Hardcover)

For fifteen years, Susan Hanson wrote a weekly column for the San Marcos newspaper. I read it regularly, and when she quit writing the column, I was one among many who urged her to collect the best of the essays and publish them. She has done so, but she has not just selected from her earlier essays. She has added new essays, revised earlier ones, grouped them. And Texas Tech University press has put them into a remarkably attractive package, one featuring illustrations by Melanie Fain. Now I and others have a chance to read these little gems at our leisure. And that is the way I suggest the book be read. I put it on my bedside table, and most nights I read or reread an essay. But I am not sure essay is the proper category for them. Probably prose poems is closer to what they are. Normally, I am not fond of prose poems, but these I like, not just because they are well written but because many are about Central Texas, the place where I live-- its weather, trees, flowers, insects. In her initial essay, Hanson tells about moving from the Gulf Coast of Texas and having to adjust her gardening to the harsh reality of Central Texas. She tells of planting Azaleas and hydrangeas and watching them die as they were starved by the chalky, alkaline soil. She learned to accept the reality of life in her new place, first by inventorying what was on her small semirural lot and then learning from those plants she found: "Instead of treating every unknown seedling as a weed, I let it be--at least until I knew for certain what it was. And rather than imposing some design more suited to a different time and place, I let the landscape show me how it worked." And we are the beneficiaries of what she learned. Most of her selections are about her piece of Central Texas. Typically, she tells of seeing or hearing something there, and then she reflects on implications of what she observes. She brings her widespread reading to bear on the situation with short, well chosen quotes from such writers as Mary Oliver, Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Jack Kerouac, Henry David Thoreau, John Tveten, Aldo Leopold, and Richard Phelan. Hanson also reports on what she sees and thinks at a retreat center, Lebh Shomea, in South Texas, and at parks and camps in the Texas Hill Country along several rivers, the Little Blanco, the Guadalupe, and the Frio. Occasionally she goes farther afield, visiting and reporting on far West Texas, Utah, and Colorado.

From the marmot in Colorado to the javelina of South Texas, from the False Dayflower in her yard to the palmettos in the Ottine swamp, from the Cooper's hawk to the cormorant--Hanson calmly and gracefully informs us. And she relates all of this to the humans who live with these and other things, things natural, every day, and wondrous. She writes of the change of seasons and our acceptance or resistance to that and other changes. She relates the losses of nature to those humans have--the death of a child or a parent. She asks, "How can I understand that what is absent is not gone, that what has ended is not finished, that what is taken is returned as more than memory?" She says she can't: "What I can do, though is listen for the sound of the sandhill cranes flying high above my house this fall, feel the supple shoots of next spring's phlox, memorize the curve and hue of Michaelmas daisies in full bloom. What I can do is live as though beauty matters, as if its imprint on the soul never fades."

What I like most about the essays is both her precision in reporting and her hesitance in concluding. She is willing to admit paradox: "We must be patient, reminding ourselves that whatever comes will arrive a piece at a time. And finally, we must bear the weight of paradox, recognizing that delight and sorrow are soul mates, that redemption and loss are a part of the same sacred ground." What I like least about them is that they are so few. Already, I and other readers are urging her to mine her former columns for another volume of essays.''