The Presence of Absence: On Prayers and an Epiphany

The story of an ecstatic spiritual moment—and the search to experience it again

When she was twenty-seven years old, writer Doris Grumbach had an epiphany. It was as if God were right there beside her, and she had a "feeling of peace so intense that it seemed to expand into ineffable joy." After this fleeting moment, Grumbach became determined to recapture what she had felt. The Presence of Absence is the story of her fifty-year search.

Grumbach is an open-minded and skilled seeker, and ...