While spirituality is still thought to be primarily a personal quest for holiness and religious experience, it might be thought mere narcissism in an era of widespread need. Moe-Lobeda shows how the advent of globalization places a new horizon on the spiritual quest but, at the same time, has caused an enervation of people's sense of moral agency. What can I, one person, do to affect such a massive and systemic shift?

Far from being a flight from the world, she argues, the classic Christian contemplative tradition can ignite critical vision and creative resistance to the seemingly inevitable march of globalization.