Why has a tiny old mining town straight out of Gunsmoke or Deadwood - Crestone, Colorado - become home to twenty-five spiritual centers representing nearly all the brand-name faiths of the world? With the keen eye of a storyteller, the insights of a scholar, and the heart of a seeker, Jeffery Paine narrates a truly unique adventure. He explores Crestone's wintry, oxygen-thin mountain geography and introduces a cast of spiritual mavericks and unlikely visionaries. Paine finds in Crestone a remarkable dedication to coexistence. Paradoxically, the town's amazing spiritual diversity highlights fundamental commonalities in a way that will strike and even inspire believers, agnostics, and searchers of every stripe.
"Who knew that among the mountains of Colorado there exists a town devoted to enlightenment - and boasting twenty-five religious centers, coexisting in perfect amity? How is that possible? In Enlightenment Town, Jeffery Paine takes us on a journey to meet its unforgettable inhabitants in Airstream trailers, disused mineshafts, and quiet retreats, across nineteen years. Fascinating, beautifully wri
Nigel Hamilton, award-winning biographer
"In Enlightenment Town, readers go on the most uncanny, humorous, profound, and completely surprising journey to the heart of the spiritual Wild West. If you thought you knew what makes contemporary pilgrims tick, guess again. Jeffery Paine gives us wonderfully vivid portraits of renegade seekers of truth. He anoints our language with his splendid prose; he is our most creative journalist-scholar
Howard Norman, author of The Bird Artist and My Darling Detective
"What if Thornton Wilder had read The Tibetan Book of the Dead before writing Our Town? What if Norman Rockwell had spent time in a Native American sweat lodge and then decided to paint spirit animals? What if Billy Graham had befriended Allen Ginsberg and they had done ayahuasca together? This is the sort of wild nowhere/everywhere American landscape Jeffery Paine describes with great flair, cour
Dana Sawyer, author of Aldous Huxley: A Biography and Huston Smith: Wisdomkeeper
