"The practice of contemplation is one of the great spiritual arts,"
writes Martin Laird in A Sunlit Absence. "Not a technique but a skill,
it harnesses the winds of grace that lead us out into the liberating sea
of silence."
In this companion volume to his bestselling Into the Silent Land,
Laird focuses on a quality often overlooked by books on Christian
meditation: a vast and flowing spaciousness that embraces both silence
and sound, and transcends all subject/object dualisms. Drawing on the
wisdom of great contemplatives from St. Augustine and St. Teresa of
Avila to St. Hesychios, Simone Weil, and many others, Laird shows how we
can uncover the deeper levels of awareness that rest within us like
buried treasure waiting to be found. The key insight of the book is that
as our practice matures, so will our experience of life's ordeals,
sorrows, and joys expand into generous, receptive maturity. We learn to
see whatever difficulties we experience in meditation--boredom,
lethargy, arrogance, depression, grief, anxiety--not as obstacles to be
overcome but as opportunities to practice surrender to what is. With
clarity and grace Laird shows how we can move away from identifying with
our turbulent, ever-changing
thoughts and emotions to the cultivation of a "sunlit absence"--the
luminous awareness in which God's presence can most profoundly be
felt.
Addressed to both beginners and intermediates on the pathless path of
still prayer, A Sunlit Absence offers wise guidance on the specifics
of contemplative practice as well as an inspiring vision of the purpose
of such practice and the central role it can play in our spiritual
lives.
