Description:
Silent Fire is one of the most beautifully written and insightful spiritual memoirs to appear in years. One day James A. Connor, a former Jesuit priest, began a hospital rotation by encountering a young couple who had just lost their newborn baby in a freak car accident. Sadly, Connor found no words of spiritual comfort. Instead he struggled in awkward silence, wondering what kind of sick God could let this happen. Soon after, he fled the priesthood and drove to a lakeside cabin where he began a silent retreat. "Silence thickened, and I fidgeted--nothing stood between me and my own feelings ... I came to the lake not to speak, then, but to listen--to the loons, to the wind, to the birds, and to the growing fear that nothing made sense anyway."In his silent exile Connor eventually finds meaning in the making of coffee, the streak of the Milky Way, an encounter with a drunken neighbor. This contemplation on silence (with bursts of humor) will make you yearn for an unplugged life, or at least a more examined one. Take it on a retreat and turn down the volume so you can listen for what longs to be heard. Or read it in morsels, evening by evening, before you drift into the hush of sleep. Over time it will surely merit the bookshelf companionship of Merton, Thoreau, and Whitman. --Gail Hudson
| 
