Silence is essential for the health and well-being of humans and the environment in which they live. Yet silence has almost vanished from our lives and our world. Of all the books that claim to be about silence, this is the only one that addresses silence directly. Silence: A User's Guide is just what the title says: it is a guide to silence, which is both a vast interior spaciousness and the condition of our being in the natural world. This book exposes the processes by which silence can transfigure our lives - what Maggie Ross calls 'the work of silence'; it describes how lives steeped in silence can transfigure other lives unawares. It shows that re-learning the work of silence - once understood to be the foundation of the teaching of Jesus - gives us a way of being in the world that is more than we can ask for or imagine. Maggie Ross is an Anglican solitary. She lives in Oxford.