Dallas Willard recommended this book to me. Not that I've ever met him, but it was on his suggested further reading list in his superb book The Divine Omission, so I decided I couldn't not buy it. In his foreword, Willard tells us that in the modern world 'someone needs to tell us about solitude and silence - just to let us know there are such things. Someone then needs to tell us it's okay to enter them. Someone needs to tell us how to do it, what will happen when we do, and how we go on from there. For Ruth Barton, that someone was her spiritual director. Now Ruth tells you.'
As an extroverted activist, I was a little nervous about reading this book, thinking it would make me feel really guilty about not liking spending extended time on my own. However, as I read (and listened on my new Amazon Kindle!), I found that the message of the book is summarised well in the title: this is an invitation to solitude and silence, to the rest that only comes from a deep encounter with God. Therefore there is no guilt involved, just the awakening of a deep yearning to know God better and meet him in the ways Barton outlines in the book.
She writes in an autobiographical and accessible style, describing her own experience as a tired, busy and driven working mother, feeling called to a journey of deeper intimacy with God that could only come from carving out some serious time to be with God, to do nothing but rest in his presence. At the end of each chapter she offers advice on putting this into practice in your own life, which is really helpful because as she says, 'silence is the most challenging, the most needed and the least experienced spiritual discipline among evangelical Christians today'.
The book is full of great insight, sometimes not just about silence, for example this quote which has lived with ever since reading it: 'when it comes down to it, many of us do not believe that God's intentions towards us are deeply good; instead we live in fear that if we really trusted him, he might withhold something good from us'. She applies this to our fear of silence, but it is also true in many areas of our lives for many Christians. How many people I meet who are afraid if they fully submit to God, he might make them go to a country they hate, or force them to marry someone they can't stand, or take some terrible job - and yet God is so good and loving, not at all like a cruel teacher wanting to make us learn purely by unnecessary suffering.
As Willard says, the first task when making disciples is to get them to the point in following Jesus when they 'are quite certain that there is no "catch", no limit, to the goodness of his intentions or his power to carry them out'
Great stuff. For me, this book was a bit like reading Celebration of Discipline - after every chapter I thought 'wow - I would love to try that out - but I'll just read the next chapter first'. I would suggest that this book could really affect you if you are willing to stop after each chapter and put it into practice. For me, I think I need to read it again and do exactly that. But there are so many other great books to read...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/INVITATION-SOLITUDE-SILENCE-Experiencing-Transforming/dp/0863475957/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1294432071&sr=8-1
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