Does contemplation hold the key to turning around the global ecological crisis that currently confronts humankind? The phrase that forms the title of Christie's book, “the blue sapphire of the mind,” derives from a description of the contemplative state by the desert monk Evagrius of Pontikos (345–399). While interpreters have often focused on Evagrius's insistence that this “place of God” is imageless and transcendent, Christie instead focuses on its being a fully realized experience of dwelling within the “whole”—the all-encompassing network of relations comprising world and cosmos. In this view, contemplation trains the practitioner in forms of attention, intimacy, and compassion that have everything to do with rediscovering the natural world as our home and learning to care for it as our community. In his concluding chapter Christie calls this “practicing paradise”—that is, learning how to live toward the wholeness of creation even in the midst of the escalating brokenness and fragmentation that rend local and global ecosystems.

This is the sort of book that is best read slowly, with much time (preferably outdoors under the wide blue sky!) to ponder and test out the ideas. Christie's writing style is both meditative and intellectually intense. The foundational spirituality of the book is that of the early desert monks, as is evidenced by the chapter titles that are drawn from Greek terms favored by the likes of Evagrius. Yet Christie weaves in insights from every era of spirituality and from a myriad of contemporary scholars. Those in search of relevant and in-depth bibliography for thinking about the past, present, and future of the human spiritual relationship to the natural world will be turning to this book for many years to come.

In chapter 4 Christie reports on landscape photographer Robert Adams's assertion that “place-making” requires attention to three elements: geography, autobiography, and metaphor. I think this also gives us a clue to the method Christie employs in developing his thought. Contemplation, in Christie's view, is the ever-deeper discovery of one's place—physical, spiritual, and cosmic. To unfold this perspective for the reader, he interweaves often distressing stories of what is going on in natural ecosystems, elements of his own eco-contemplative journey, and the widest range of potential interpretive images and ideas. Thus his work exemplifies a methodological approach that is emerging within the academic discipline of spirituality, namely, explicit reference to personal experience as a way to generate the questions, reflections, and discernments that guide the inquiry. For the reader, the result is a deeply engaging text that energizes one's own questions, reflection, and discernment, while also putting one in touch with multiple new perspectives and resources.

I am in sympathy with Christie's agenda of showing that Christian spiritual traditions are not fundamentally about leading practitioners to a state of detachment from the physical and social world, but rather just the opposite. I found myself a bit uneasy, though, with how rapidly he shifted the focus away from the radical “otherness” of the contemplative state that Evagrius wrote about. Noting that Evagrius describes this state with the metaphoric language of “place,” Christie pivots on that basis from the transcendent character of the experience to its immanence, identifying it as an awareness of the inclusion of all within the network of the whole. Are these indeed two faces of the same coin, or does authentic spiritual transformation require giving a unique priority to the moment of transcendence beyond time, space, and language? The latter has been the more common view. Christie, however, would no doubt argue that the looming threat of ecological catastrophe presents an imperative to explore the less-traveled path. In doing so, he invites us to consider the possibility that ancient spiritual traditions may offer fresh and startlingly relevant resources for our current crises.

Libraries should have this book. General readers will be fascinated by its timely topic, spiritual depth, and engaging style, while researchers will be attracted by its intellectual breadth and extensive bibliography. While its use as a main class text may be limited to courses with ecospirituality as their primary theme, it could easily appear as a recommended text in a wide range of courses in theology, ethics, and spirituality.