Into the silent land A guide to the Christian practice of contemplation

Laird (religion, Villanova Univ.), a scholar of patristics and a much-published author, has written a rather unusual guide to Christian contemplation in which he urges us to look toward not God's voice but his silence. Laird hopes to persuade readers that it is not happiness or success that necessarily brings us closer to God's silence, but failure: "Our wound and the wound of God are the same wound," he writes. It is rare for Oxford to publish on the subject of personal spirituality of this sort, and the publisher's choice suggests the rare approach and quality of Laird's writing. Highly recommended. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.