Earthquakes and Gardens - (Class 200: New Studies in Religion) by Virginia Burrus

About the Book

"In Earthquakes and Gardens, professor of religion Virginia Burrus pursues an earthquake from the deep past and tracks the fallen monuments and resurgent gardens of a distant city. The starting point is Hilarion, a Christian saint who saw the recorded intensity of a mighty quake in the toppled buildings of fourth-century Cyprus. In The Life of Saint Hilarion, written in 390, we see those buildings through Saint Hilarion's eyes in just a few lines. Building out from this fragment of text and the mental images that come with it, Burrus delivers a remarkable set of meditations on the human experience of place. Earthquakes and Gardens is a methodological experiment in close and promiscuous reading, an exercise in place-centered rumination, and a powerful set of observations on destruction and resilience. The scale ranges from the deeply personal to the massive and collective. In Burrus's capable hands, earthquakes and gardens anchor us in our textual fragments while also drawing us elsewhere, opening onto more-than-human worlds that are both concrete and metaphorical, close and distant"--

Book Synopsis

Essays about ruination, resilience, reading, and religion generated by a reflection on a fourth-century hagiography.

In Jerome's Life of Saint Hilarion, a fourth-century saint briefly encounters the ruins of an earthquake-toppled city and a haunted garden in Cyprus. From these two fragmentary passages, Virginia Burrus delivers a series of sweeping meditations on our experience of place and the more-than-human worlds-the earth and its gods-that surround us. Moving between the personal and geological, Earthquakes and Gardens ruminates on destruction and resilience, ruination and resurgence, grief and consolation in times of disaster and loss. Ultimately, Burrus's close readings reimagine religion as a practice that unsettles certainty and develops mutual flourishing.

Review Quotes

"Earthquakes and Gardens succeeds in surprising its readers and enabling them to think differently about the ancient fragments with which we spend so much time and
the modern world we inhabit. For these reasons, I recommend spending time in place with this book, alert to its possibilities and uncertainties. Readers may find themselves changed as a result."-- "Religious Studies Review"

"Exquisite, mystifying, and inspirational."-- "The Christian Century"

"Earthquakes and Gardens is hard to classify. It's not really a religious book, but those interested in saints and hagiography will find much to appreciate. Certainly there is plenty here for those who enjoy the study of antiquity. There is material for people who enjoy reading about agriculture and horticulture. Certainly those who like geology and are interested in the study of earthquakes will find plenty to appreciate. Most of all, however, the book is simply good reading for anyone who loves fine writing and a well-constructed essay."--Mike Christie "My Point Being"

"Quaking and flowering, this captivatingly beautiful book twists free of disciplinary inhibitors to perform a literary cartography of illimitable place. In its dazzling multidimensional collage, a startling spiritual geography unfolds. From the Greek island where she poignantly is not, through earth-bursts of the here and there, then and now, Burrus takes the reader on an unprecedented journey."--Catherine Keller, Drew University

"This is a book about care. Burrus thinks with the reader about tenderness, fragility, loss, protectiveness, and the quiet fact of being alive in a place, and in so doing gives us a walled and green early Christian world that is deeply entwined with our own. It is a pure pleasure."--Catherine Michael Chin, University of California, Davis

"With agile imagination and lyrical prose, Burrus troubles how we do history. From the seismic eons of a tectonic earth to bits of Jerome laid out like poetry, Burrus reveals a world of destruction and regeneration on a mythic and literary Cyprus. Translating, fragmenting, recombining, and repurposing, Burrus composes chamber music, a small masterpiece."--Derek Krueger, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

About the Author

Virginia Burrus is the Bishop W. Earl Ledden professor of religion at Syracuse University. She is the author of many books, including Ancient Christian Ecopoetics: Cosmologies, Saints, Things.