In his sequel to the best-selling Into the Silent Land, Martin Laird guides the reader more deeply into the sanctuary of Christian meditation. He focuses here on negotiating key moments of difficulty on the contemplative path, showing how the struggles we resist become vehicles of the healing silence we seek. With clarity and grace Laird shows how we can move away from identifying with our turbulent, ever-changing thoughts and emotions to the cultivation of a "sunlit absence"--the luminous awareness in which God's presence can most profoundly be felt.

What if it were possible to combine energy and water in a way that would contribute to the reversal of global warming and the restoration of the planet? What if it were possible to have a better quality of life, without having to give anything up? What if that plan made such economic sense that governments and large corporations would buy into it? As it turns out, it is possible to create an energy source by using key technologies that are already available. Most cities have enough rain and sun to meet their water and energy needs, by using simple technology. Building on current mainstream trends in solar energy and wind power, Electric Water offers a clear vision of how the world's energy and water infrastructure could be transformed. The book provides: an outline of the major issues that need addressing, including global warming a fascinating explanation of key technologies in plain water a vision of business and job opportunities in restoration real-life examples, including the post-Katrina Louisiana Coastal Restoration program websites for further information. Unlike many other books on this subject, Electric Water uses accessible language to propose a workable plan for a revolutionary integration of technology and quality of life that will be of special interest to planners, engineers and architects.

For readers of Rachel Cusk and Jenny Odell, a lyrical work of autofiction that explores the dissolution of boundaries between the self and our earth as we head towards ecological catastrophe. “Emergency is an incisive kaleidoscope of past and present, nature and industry, stillness and pace, collapsing all into a tapestry of consciousness.” —Ayşegül Savaş, author of Walking on the Ceiling Emergency is a novel about the interconnectedness of all life on Earth. Our narrator is at home during lockdown, where she ponders both past and present. She remembers her 1990s childhood in rural Yorkshire. She recalls a kestrel hunt, helping a farmer save a renegade bull, and days playing with her best friend, Clare. In her village, neighbors argue, keep secrets, care for one another, and try to hold down jobs. Fox cubs fight in the woods, plants compete for space, a quarry slowly falls apart, and we see a three-legged deer who likes cake. With painterly vision, Hildyard evokes the bygone, pre-internet world of her schooldays, whose irretrievability signals at something far greater than fleeting youth. With urgent intimacy, Emergency asks us to look at the essential; the people who help define us, animals, local and global ecologies, and to consider what the slow disappearance of Hildyard’s and our own native environment might mean for humanity at large. A requiem for the English countryside, a story of remote violence, and a work of praise for a persistently lively world, Daisy Hildyard’s Emergency reinvents the pastoral novel for the climate change era.