Jana Wrenn’s Reviews > Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation > Status Update

“In an age when people claim to be “spiritual, not religious”—not really knowing what they mean by either—lack of proper motivation is common. We must long for truth, freedom, loving communion with the silent depths of God… Many people would rather win an argument than know liberating truth or would rather feel safe than discover what it means to live in freedom under grace.”

We must move from image to likeness… “For only when we do not belong to ourselves do we become like Him.” (Gen 1:26; St. Diadochos).

“We go off in search of what has from all eternity sought and found us. The setting off in the wrong direction sustains a profound moral and intellectual ignorance, whose fruit is a sense of alienation from God, from self, from others. God is the ground of our innermost being, yet we skim along on the surface of life.”

“The mind’s obsessive running in tight circles generates and sustains the anguish that forms the mental cage in which we live much of our lives—or what we take to be our lives.”

“The more we realize we are one with God, the more become ourselves, just as we are, just as we were created to be. The Creator is outpouring love, the creation, the love outpoured.”