David Arthur Auten is Senior Pastor at the First Congregational Church of Ramona, California. He is a graduate of Yale University, ordained in the United Church of Christ, and also the author of Eccentricity: A Spirituality of Difference and Embrace: Strangeness, Mediocrity, and the Living God.
"David Auten's book of meditations is a remarkable blend of
apophatic theology and spiritual direction. The author explores the
religious significance of emptiness in a myriad of forms--as
ignorance and empty space, in death and boredom, as absence and in
silence. With luminous prose, Auten directs his reader's attention
to the gift-like quality of emptiness, and also to the way in which
the cultivation of absence as a genuine presence in our lives
constitutes an important spiritual exercise. This book is laced
with insight, refreshing in its honesty, and increasingly relevant
in a world of constant busyness and high-information noise."
--Michael L. Raposa, Lehigh University
"Drawing on both the mystical, apophatic tradition of Christianity
and on Eastern traditions, Auten invites us to engage with his
remarkable set of reflections on how more absence (the
contradiction is intentional) and greater emptiness can fill us
with greater personal wisdom and self-knowledge. This is not a book
to be rushed through but rather savored, a little bit at a time, in
order to allow absence and emptiness to become a meaningful part of
our daily lives."
--Frank Kirkpatrick, Trinity College
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