More than a decade after writing what was to become a classic of modern spiritual literature, Thomas Green returns to the "dry well" to share what the last ten years have shown him. He explores the dryness and finds there a spot where both mature prayers and active contemplatives "can be at home" and can learn to live gracefully "drinking from the dry well of prayer."
As a spiritual director he is often asked if the dry well-the dark night-is always a form of desolation. He responds that with good guidance, we all can “truly come to be at peace in the dark," and it is this new challenge that he explores in this work. Spurred on by the need to consider the mystery of prayer, Green combines the insights of two experts he knows well-John of the Cross and Ignatius Loyola. The favorite themes pf these two saints repeatedly emerge in this excellent commentary on the contemporary experience of the spiritual life: prayer as "loving attentiveness," the dark nights of sense and spirit, seeing by faith, the beauty and cost of *loving service," and laboring with Christ. He also offers consolation and advice for when prayer and action seem to dry up and become useless. The result, a felicitous merging of contemplation and action, is must reading for those who pray amidst the clamor of the contemporary world. Drinking From A Dry Well is a worthy sequel to an enduring favorite, a summing up of the personal prayer and apostolic Witness of a seasoned director of souls.