Into the Silent Land
by Martin Laird, OSA. Oxford University Press, New York, 2006. This book is, as Rowan Williams says, ‘a rare treasure’. The abbess of Redwood Monastery in California lent me her copy while I was staying there soon after its publication. Now I have my own copy. To open the book is to step into the inner cathedral and to be blessed by being in that space. The author knows whereof he speaks; the text is clear, attractive and enabling. After 55 years of holding Thomas Kelly’s A Testament of Devotion as my favourite devotional book, I fear I must now relegate it to second place.