As the leader of The World Community for Christian Meditation, Laurence Freeman's calling takes him all over the world to teach and lead groups who want to practise contemplative prayer. In this spiritual travel memoir, he recounts timeless, memorable and moving stories of people, places and events in which he has encountered God's transformative presence.

The title Beauty’s Field comes from a Shakespeare sonnet and the book explores how the life of God can be found in the most unlikely places, not only in the world's beauty but even in its tragedy. Slum priests quietly bringing hope to the favelas of Brazil, the gloriously fat stone ladies of Malta which are the world's oldest depictions of God, the different effects of a mountain-top retreat on an investment banker, a tired social worker and a cancer patient, the impact of a child's death on a whole community – these and many more stories movingly reveal how the sacred strains to find expression in every life, every place, every day.

These short, vivid, real stories can be read and re-read to sharpen our own ways of seeing and open our own 'doors of perception’.