A Sunlit Absence, by Martin Laird

It is not easy to do more than pay lip service to the scriptural call "Be still and know that I am God." As anyone who has tried with any regularity soon discovers, becoming still before God is not easy. It is said that Teresa of Ávila once shook her hourglass in frustration be­cause her time of prayer was passing at a snail's pace. More recently Rowan Wil­liams, the archbishop of Canterbury, wrote that his practice of contemplative prayer sometimes feels like an exercise in "twiddling my thumbs" and "shifting from buttock to buttock."

A Sunlit Absence, by Martin Laird, a professor of theology at Villanova University and a priest in the Order of St. Augustine, is filled with sympathy, grace and encouragement for those who have taken up the practice of contemplative prayer but are experiencing its inevitable challenges of boredom, distractions and racing thoughts. In this companion volume to his earlier Into the Silent Land (2006), Laird contends that these challenges are not obstacles but rather opportunities that help to reshape and refine our relationship with God. "Prayer," he writes, "deepens by way of ordeal."

Contending with what Laird calls "our opera scores of inner chatter" is one of the most vexing challenges for those starting down the contemplative path. At a recent retreat I invited people to spend a couple of minutes silently noticing how many separate thoughts (fix an appliance, nurse a grudge, pay a bill) entered their minds. Most of the participants counted at least 20. One individual counted over 50! Not surprisingly, it is not unusual for people to give up on contemplative prayer after just one or two tries. They simply feel too beleaguered and discouraged by the torrent of their own "twittering chatter."