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Roots & Wings

Author:	Margaret Silf
Published By:	Darton, Longman and Todd (London)
Pages:	162
Price:	£10.95
ISBN:	0 232 52627 3

Reviewed by David Stephenson.

This wonderfully understated book takes the reader (and group of readers, as it is ideal for group study) on a journey “from a speck of stardust to a spark of God” (as the sub-title has it). Margaret Silf’s writings on spirituality, written largely from an Ignatian perspective, will be known to many and appreciated by most. She writes as a lay Christian who is “neither a scientist or a theologian”, but uses the language and models of both to weave a compelling narrative of human life in relation to God, in the context of the story of the universe.

By the standards of Margaret Silf’s other books this is relatively short. However, the journey itself is full and the narrative dense, though very readable. A key narrative device is a very rich use of story, metaphor, analogy and image. Most of these are highly original and work very effectively. Just occasionally an image or metaphor seems a little forced or a story a little contrived, but this is a minor criticism given the richness and inter-connectedness of the whole. Alongside the narrative are questions suitable for either individual reflection or group discussion.

For me the dominant challenge of the book has been to examine the cosmology around which I base my own spirituality. Like Silf, I am not a scientist, but have accepted without too much theological difficulty Darwin and much of what has followed. However, I wonder if my spirituality has really caught up in any developed way. Certainly, until I read Roots and Wings I had not taken the trouble to make any very well worked through connections between the ‘new science’ and my life of prayer.

“The human journey from a Speck of Stardust...” does turn out to be a rich source for meditation and wonderment, increasing our sense of what it means to have been “intricately woven in the depths of the earth” (Psalm 139:15 NRSV).

Roots and Wings is unlikely to provide a robust set of counter arguments to Dawkins et al, or better enable the Christian to enter into debate with the many who buy their books, but this is not its intention. Rather, in providing a rich resource for the cultivation of a Christian imagination about the cosmos and our place in it, the book will help us to move beyond spiritual naiveté in relation to their theories, while deeply enriching our own wonderment about our lives and destiny, the universe we live in and God’s works and purposes.