Within the first two pages, H.A. Williams asserts that most of us suffer from a spiritual form of hypochondria in regard to our (inaccurate) ideas about tension: ''We imagine something to have gone wrong when it is in fact inevitable and necessary. We mistake signs of health for symptoms of disease.'' Tension, as coterminous with the universe itself (example: the molecule achieving dynamic movement as a product of conflict between positive and negative poles) can be a life-giving, creative force. It can be, when recognized and welcomed, the way by which each bears his particular cross and most fully and rewardingly becomes himself. In essence, the way of vocation -- and thereby, resurrection. Writing in prose akin to Lewis and Chesterton, Williams (a former dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, and currently a monk in West Yorkshire) uncovers the healthy paradoxes within dependence, autonomy, faith, doubt, prayer and action -- suggesting that laughter provides the universal arena in which these conflicts are resolved: ''In much conventional contrition there is a selfishness and pride which are scarcely hidden... But in laughter we sit light to ourselves. That is why laughter is the purest form of our response to God...to set light to yourself is true humility.'' Centuries of Christendom would agree.