SILENCE
some quotes (Newbury PCN meeting June 2013)
Pierre Lacout.
Words split apart, Silence unites. Words scatter, Silence gathers together. Words stir up, Silence brings peace.
Words engender denial, Silence invites even the denier to find fresh hope in the confident expectation of a mystery
which can be accomplished within. In my active silence, I shall prepare myself to hear the Silence of God.
Richard Rohr from: The Naked Now
Silence as breathing.
The name of God, Yahweh, YHVH was unspeakable to Jews. Formerly the name was not spoken but breathed.
The one thing we do every moment of our lives is therefore to speak the name of God. It makes it our first and our
last word as we enter and leave the world. For some years now, I have taught this to contemplative groups in many
countries, and it changes peoples’ faith and prayer lives in substantial ways. I remind people that there is no
Islamic, Christian or Jewish way of breathing. There is no American, African or Asian way of breathing. There is
no rich or poor way of breathing. The playing field is utterly levelled. The air of the earth is one and the same air
and this divine wind blows where it will – everywhere. No one and no religion can control this spirit.
Stay with breath, attend to breath, the same breath that was breathed into Adam’s nostrils by this Yahweh, the very
breath that Jesus handed over with trust on the cross. And isn’t it wonderful that breath, wind, spirit and air are
precisely nothing and yet everything?
Eckhart Tolle
It has been said: ‘Stillness is the language God speaks and everything else is a bad translation’ Stillness is really
another word for space. Becoming conscious of stillness in our lives will connect us with the formless and timeless
dimension within ourselves, which is beyond thought, beyond the ego. You are never more essentially, more deeply
yourself than when you are still. When you are still, you are who you were before you temporarily assumed this
physical and mental form called a person. You are also who you will be when the form dissolves.
Anthony de Mello
Seek the inner silence of the heart without which the voice of God cannot be heard. Inner silence – so hard to
achieve. My own inner voice competing with remembered voices of others competing for my attention. Seek
exterior silence first. Jesus tells us to shut the door when we go to pray. ‘You will make thrilling discoveries once
you have suffered through the initial boredom and restlessness that silence brings. You will find that this dark
silence is really filled with heavenly light.’
Story of a friend working in Papua New Guinea
Alice Wedega, grand daughter of a cannibal chief, had learnt to make her Christian faith practical. She wanted to
share what she had discovered about silence. So we met with a dozen of a her tribe and in a simple way she told
them that as human beings we had two voices speaking to our hearts, the good one and the bad one. She said that
we need to be silent to know which one to obey. After being quiet for a while, a young man got up: The good
voice has told me that we should end all cannibalism in our land and I should break my spear. He did so right there
and then. I will never forget that moment.
Sheila Newman
Silence is something that is very powerful when experienced in community. Rather than cutting people off from
each other it intensifies the sense of community. In a longer period of silence in the Benedictine way, three
principles that might be used in deciding whether something needs to be said are: Is it kind, is it true, is it
necessary? Silence in Benedictine life brings about peacefulness, reflection and a sense of the presence of God.
I have found it a wonderful way to live.
A Quaker on Silence
Silence is a tool which helps me to be fully present, focused, attentive to the divine promptings. I stand in the Light,
willing to be open and vulnerable, ready to be challenged and directed. Why? Because my yearning to be more
fully my true self, to realise the potential of what I am and what I can be in relation the Divine and to all others
requires it. I have found the analogy of coming to an ever-present stream a helpful reminder of how this Source is
always present and active. It requires only my attention to it to be surrounded and moved by it.
Martin Laird talks of the 3 doorways into silence, each one deeper than before.
One of the characteristics of having moved through the 3rd doorway shows itself in our sense of self. A quiet firm
confidence replaces posturing and masquerading job, what many call the ego. But no label applies to the ‘unselfed
self’ who emerges from the 3rd doorway. This is no loss of identity, but it is a flowering. It is what the prophet
Jeremiah calls our self before we were born and known by God from all eternity. ‘Before I formed you in the womb
I knew you (Jer. 1-5) This silence is marked by a deep inner freedom in the midst of life’s trials, failings,
responsibilities.
Thomas Merton quoting a Syrian monk called Isaac of Nineveh:
If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence is like the sunlight, it will illuminate you in God and will deliver you
from the phantoms of ignorance. Silence will unite you to God himself. It brings you a fruit that the tongue cannot
describe. In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then there is born something that draws us to
silence. After a while a certain sweetness is born in the heart of the exercise and the body is drawn almost by force
to remain in silence.
Tony Windross
Acknowledged ignorance is the only honest response to most of life. Ignorance lies at the very heart of religion.
Silence is probably the most appropriate, and certainly the most profound, religious response to this. It makes no
claims and deceives no one. But like any spiritual discipline it can be hard work and very troubling. It throws us
back on our selves with all that that involves. If we are genuinely open and honest about our ignorance, we are
forced into silence. Until the Mystery of Life brings us face to face to silence, there is little hope of God ever
getting a look-in.