As a 27-year-old, the poet Doris Grumbach had a fleeting yet undeniable experience of God's presence. In order to recapture that experience, she began a frustrating few decades of churchgoing, and eventually she abandoned formal prayer--only to begin an equally frustrating search for God in private. The Presence of Absence: On Prayers and an Epiphany is a slim memoir of her ongoing search. Grumbach is most interesting when she reflects on the writers and thinkers--from Meister Eckhart to Kathleen Norris--who have shaped her understanding of the risks and rewards of solitary prayer. And although her unyielding integrity has trapped her in a loneliness that sometimes sounds terrifying, Grumbach's stringent refusal to be glib about God will serve as an inspiring corrective example for many. --Michael Joseph Gross


From Publishers Weekly
More than half a century ago, novelist and essayist Grumbach (Coming into the End Zone, etc.) experienced an overwhelming "feeling of peace so intense that it seemed to expand into ineffable joy." In that fleeting moment, she felt the presence of God, and this book is an extended meditation on her longing for a renewed sense of God's presence. After years steeped in the liturgy and clamor of the institutional Protestant church, Grumbach abandoned communal prayer in favor of solitude and the Psalms and found guidance in the works of Simone Weil, Dag Hammarskjold and Thomas Merton, whose assertion that "prayer means yearning for the simple presence of God" guided her contemplative journey. In telling of her fight against the intrusions of her ego and of her struggle to pray through the intense pain of neuralgia, Grumbach achieves a determinedly patient, honest and down-to-earth voice. She wants God wholeheartedly, but she also refuses any experience of God less than the "heart-churning" experience she felt so long ago. For Grumbach, the absence of this epiphanic experience calls into question God's presence. It is not until she discovers psychotherapist James Hillman's idea that "absence is the first form of knowing" that she can accept the possibility of God's presence even in the apparent absence of an epiphany. Grumbach's graceful and elegant prose records the agonies and the joys of her search for God's presence. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Convinced that she had encountered the presence of God during an epiphany at age 27, novelist Grumbach, a contributing editor to the New Republic and the New York Times Book Review, spent the next 50 years seeking to re-create the experience through formal prayer and church attendance. This book chronicles her subsequent move away from communal worship in an attempt to rekindle God's presence through solitary prayer and contemplation. Sifting through the literature of prayer and mysticism, she discovers her resonance with?and resistance to?people such as Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, and Kathleen Norris. While her work serves well as a sampling of these authors' insights into prayer, it is a wearying litany of anguish and self-doubt, burdened with a sense of insularity and joyless obligation.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The Washington Post Book World, Colman McCarthy
...Grumbach has produced a bracingly candid and lyrically written account of her life of prayer. In only 126 pages she condenses the mysteries of faith and the yearnings to penetrate them into a text that deserves to be as highly ranked as any work of spirituality since the writings of Thomas Merton.


From Booklist
Always frank about herself and her perceptions, Grumbach has chosen to share her most precious and confounding experience: an epiphanic day on which she was suffused with the power of God. The joy of that unexpected and glorious revelation, which occurred 50 years ago, never again manifested itself, and Grumbach has been on a "long and continuing search to recover a sense of the presence of God" ever since. Grumbach ponders many conundrums as she chronicles her quest, including the difference between communal worship and her preference for solitary contemplation. So determined was she to learn to pray on her own, she made the difficult decision to leave the church, then, in a traumatic twist of fate, was promptly afflicted with an excruciatingly painful illness. Rallying herself to fight physical agony with intellectual and spiritual intensity, Grumbach turned to books, gleaning insights from such chosen mentors as Simone Weil and Thomas Merton, and ultimately realizing that what she had considered an absence was in truth a more subtle and abiding form of God's presence. Donna Seaman


From Kirkus Reviews
A disjointed but provocative account of a spiritual journey. Grumbach (Fifty Days of Solitude, 1994, etc.) has continued her recent spate of autobiographical writing with this brief but insightful glimpse into contemplative prayer. After losing her individual religious quest in the busy-ness of parish life, Grumbach quit attending church and focused instead on recapturing a certain spiritual epiphany of her young adulthood, never repeated since. In characteristic fashion, her quest brings us into dialogue with various poets, mystics, and philosophers; this memoir is particularly influenced by Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, Kathleen Norris, and Julian of Norwich. (Grumbach includes a helpful bibliography for further reading.) A hideously painful bout with shingles challenges her meditative practice, and she finds that prayer is often impossible under such circumstances. She thus eschews praying for healing to seek out Gods presence and turns also to the discipline of daily psalm reading (How long, O Lord, wilt thou forsake me?). She expresses qualms throughout that her exclusive personal quest may be leading her further from true prayer, which othersincluding Norris, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and her own seminary-administrator daughterattest can only be experienced in community. In truth, Grumbachs journey even borders on the cantankerous: I wanted to use the time I had left seeking Him out intimately, and loving my neighbor at a distance. Though brilliant, the writing is chaotic in its organization; the penultimate chapter succumbs to a mlange of quotations on prayer that Grumbach has collected on her journey. Even the author seems somewhat aware of her memoirs dissatisfactions: in the epilogue she notes that in her manuscript she came to replace every solid-seeming noun with tentative adjectives and gerunds. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
The Presence of Absence follows Grumbach's journey to recover through prayer the sense of God's presence. Illuminated by her readings of accounts of epiphany and intensified by an extended period of extreme and chronic pain, Grumbach's quest to feel the presence of God is a moving and inspiring journey through vanity, faith, and love. "[Grumbach's] prose shines with serene grace." -Le Anne Schreiber, The New York Times Book Review

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When she was twenty-seven, Doris Grumbach was visited by what she recognized as the presence of God. For a woman without any religious education or faith, it was as unexpected as it was joyful. The Presence of Absence follows Grumbach's journey to recover through prayer the sense of God's presence. Eventually abandoning formal prayer in church, she begins to celebrate God using a private ceremony of worship. Illuminated by her readings of accounts of epiphany - from Meister Eckhard to Thomas Merton, Simone Weil to Kathleen Norris - her searching attempts at private prayers reflect some of the most compelling issues of faith: Can we question our memories of "spiritual radiance"? Is it wrongheaded to try to recover joy? Can we experience God without social action, service, and community? Intensified by an extended period of extreme and chronic pain, Grumbach's quest to feel the presence of God is a moving and inspiring journey through vanity, faith, and love.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

More than half a century ago, novelist and essayist Grumbach (Coming into the End Zone, etc.) experienced an overwhelming "feeling of peace so intense that it seemed to expand into ineffable joy." In that fleeting moment, she felt the presence of God, and this book is an extended meditation on her longing for a renewed sense of God's presence. After years steeped in the liturgy and clamor of the institutional Protestant church, Grumbach abandoned communal prayer in favor of solitude and the Psalms and found guidance in the works of Simone Weil, Dag Hammarskjold and Thomas Merton, whose assertion that "prayer means yearning for the simple presence of God" guided her contemplative journey. In telling of her fight against the intrusions of her ego and of her struggle to pray through the intense pain of neuralgia, Grumbach achieves a determinedly patient, honest and down-to-earth voice. She wants God wholeheartedly, but she also refuses any experience of God less than the "heart-churning" experience she felt so long ago. For Grumbach, the absence of this epiphanic experience calls into question God's presence. It is not until she discovers psychotherapist James Hillman's idea that "absence is the first form of knowing" that she can accept the possibility of God's presence even in the apparent absence of an epiphany. Grumbach's graceful and elegant prose records the agonies and the joys of her search for God's presence. (Aug.)

Library Journal

Convinced that she had encountered the presence of God during an epiphany at age 27, novelist Grumbach, a contributing editor to the New Republic and the New York Times Book Review, spent the next 50 years seeking to re-create the experience through formal prayer and church attendance. This book chronicles her subsequent move away from communal worship in an attempt to rekindle God's presence through solitary prayer and contemplation. Sifting through the literature of prayer and mysticism, she discovers her resonance with--and resistance to--people such as Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, and Kathleen Norris. While her work serves well as a sampling of these authors' insights into prayer, it is a wearying litany of anguish and self-doubt, burdened with a sense of insularity and joyless obligation.

Booknews

Grumbach recounts her search to regain a sense of the presence of God that she experienced once as a young woman. Without religious education, she followed her own path away from formal church, illuminated by her reading of accounts by Meister Eckhard, Thomas Merton, Simone Weil, Kathleen Norris, and others. An inspirational rather than scholarly work. No index. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Kirkus Reviews

A disjointed but provocative account of a spiritual journey. Grumbach (Fifty Days of Solitude, 1994, etc.) has continued her recent spate of autobiographical writing with this brief but insightful glimpse into contemplative prayer. After losing her individual religious quest in the busy-ness of parish life, Grumbach quit attending church and focused instead on recapturing a certain spiritual epiphany of her young adulthood, never repeated since. In characteristic fashion, her quest brings us into dialogue with various poets, mystics, and philosophers; this memoir is particularly influenced by Simone Weil, Thomas Merton, Kathleen Norris, and Julian of Norwich. (Grumbach includes a helpful bibliography for further reading.) A hideously painful bout with shingles challenges her meditative practice, and she finds that prayer is often impossible under such circumstances. She thus eschews praying for healing to seek out Godþs presence and turns also to the discipline of daily psalm reading (þHow long, O Lord, wilt thou forsake me?þ). She expresses qualms throughout that her exclusive personal quest may be leading her further from true prayer, which othersþincluding Norris, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and her own seminary-administrator daughterþattest can only be experienced in community. In truth, Grumbachþs journey even borders on the cantankerous: þI wanted to use the time I had left seeking Him out intimately, and loving my neighbor at a distance.þ Though brilliant, the writing is chaotic in its organization; the penultimate chapter succumbs to a m￯﾿ﾽlange of quotations on prayer that Grumbach has collected on her journey. Even the author seemssomewhat aware of her memoirþs dissatisfactions: in the epilogue she notes that in her manuscript she came to replace every þsolid-seeming nounþ with þtentative adjectives and gerunds.þ