In the stillness of the quiet

In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.

Let me seek the gift of silence

Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into a prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.

What is the point of silence?

But what is the point of silence? The point was, we learned, not mere silence, not silence to preserve some sort of order, but something much greater. In silence the idea was to recollect ourselves, to place ourselves more squarely in the presence of God than we would if people were talking to us all the time. We could pray, we could meditate, we could contemplate. . . . Silence was broken, of course, by people doing things they could not control -- coughing, sneezing, short periods of recreation, the sounds of work being done . . . But all of this merely emphasized the silence rather than disturbing it. Sounds could never absorb this silence; nothing could order it around. It concentrated itself, and from it all else flowed. Silence could never be silenced.

Two silences

There are two silences. One silence I choose to keep when I need to hear a word that will heal, instruct, or console. The other silence comes when I have heard something so powerful, so real, that words, spoken or written, would only diminish its power.

This is where silence has brought me

Now, standing by the shore, I am as filled with awe and thankfulness as on that January afternoon. In this moment, I am sustained by a sense of wonder and peace, humbled by life, and respectful of it, connected to the planet and her people, and to something much greater than myself, an invisible essence for which I have no language. I live in its mystery, content to let it be revealed. I do not have to name it. It is enough to know its truth.
 
This is where silence has brought me.
 

November 2011 (Vol. XXIV, No. 10)

Warm greetings, dear friends! As the year draws to a close, the world around us seems to slow down, reflecting a drawing inward, a time of rest to rebuild reserves of strength, food for another active season of growing and producing. The earth lies fallow, while deep within, that which is necessary for life and growth replenishes itself. We would do well to observe and take in this valuable lesson from nature. We, too, need time to lie fallow, time to just be, to listen and dream and wait for the wisdom at the center of our being to make itself known to us before we enter again into a busy season of doing. In the silence we come home to ourselves, we remember who we are; in the silence we are renewed and strengthened for the seasons of our lives.

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A habit of silence

Silence as a spiritual practice is much more than being able to sit still without talking for thirty minutes or longer. Instead, silence is a quality of presence. The silence we search for is an overall state of being. It is not something we achieve with great effort, either, but something we uncover that is inside us. Somewhere at our core there is a reservoir of silence. . . . To return regularly to this depth, whether in cloistered silence or in line at the grocery, is called "a habit of silence." It is not duration that is important, but the returning time after time to the source within us that, in time, shapes who we are.

~ Marv Hiles, in “The Way Through,” No. 37, Spring 2011
Marv Hiles The Way Through silence

The power of silence

We come to know the power of Silence
In deep meditation; here,
True Wisdom emerges silently,
Rising up from the Mystery
Of the unseen Source within all.

~ from WALKING WITH WISDOM by Nan Merrill
Nan Merrill Walking With Wisdom silence Buy on Amazon

The silence within us

The silence within us is the source of all that we are.

~ Swami Amar Jyoti
Swami Amar Jyoti silence

Silence is one of the major thresholds in the world

Silence is one of the major thresholds in the world. . . . Meister Eckhart said that there is nothing in the world that resembles God so much as silence. Silence is a great friend of the soul; it unveils the riches of solitude. It is very difficult to reach that quality of inner silence. You must make a space for it so that it may begin to work for you. In a certain sense, you do not need the whole armory and vocabulary of therapies, psychologies, or spiritual programs. If you have a trust in and an expectation of your own solitude, everything that you need to know will be revealed to you. These are some wonderful lines from the French poet Rene Char: "Intensity is silent, its image is not. I love everything that dazzles me and then accentuates the darkness within me." Here is an image of silence as the force that discloses hidden depth. Silence is the sister of the divine.

~ from ANAM CARA by John O'Donohue
John O'Donohue Anam Cara silence Buy on Amazon

Silence brings us back to basics

Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses, to our selves. It locates us. Without that return we can go so far away from our true natures that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves. We live blindly and act thoughtlessly. We endanger the delicate balance which sustains our lives, our communities, and our planet.

~ from INVITING SILENCE by Gunilla Norris
Gunilla Norris Inviting Silence silence Buy on Amazon

Silence is the matrix from which the word is born

Silence is the matrix from which word is born, the home to which word returns through understanding. Word (in contrast to chatter) does not break the silence.

In a genuine word, silence comes to word. In genuine understanding, word comes home into silence. For those who know only the world of words, silence is mere emptiness. But our silent heart knows the paradox: the emptiness of silence is inexhaustibly rich; all the words in the world are merely a trickle of its fullness.

~ Br David Steindl-Rast, thanks to Liz Stewart
David Steindl-Rast silence

Darkness, stillness, silence

each evening
is a softly
glowing
entrance
into
darkness
stillness
silence

~ Robert Hirschman Brown
Robert Hirschman Brown silence

The silence that is printed in the center of our being

May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.

~ Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton silence

The great truth has great silence

The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.

~ Rabindinath Tagore
Rabindinath Tagore silence

Silence is not an absence but a presence

Lindbergh wrote more than fifty years ago, "Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distractions. Instead of stilling the center, the axis of the wheel, we add more centrifugal activities to our lives -- which tend to throw us off balance."

But our spirit has an instinct for silence. Every soul innately yearns for stillness, for a space, a garden where we can till, sow, reap, and rest, and by doing so come to a deeper sense of self and our place in the universe. Silence is not an absence but a presence. Not an emptiness but repletion. A filling up.

~ from LISTENING BELOW THE NOISE by Anne D. LeClaire
Anne D. LeClaire Listening Below The Noise silence Buy on Amazon

The reason we flee silence

Unfortunately, in seeing ourselves as we truly are, not all that we see is beautiful and attractive. This is undoubtedly part of the reason we flee silence. We do not want to be confronted with our hypocrisy, our phoniness. We see how false and fragile is the false self we project. We have to go through this painful experience to come to our true self. It is a harrowing journey, a death to self -- the false self -- and no one wants to die. But it is the only path to life, to freedom, to peace, to true love. And it begins with silence. We cannot give ourselves in love if we do not know and possess ourselves. This is the great value of silence. It is the pathway to all we truly want.

~ M. Basil Pennington
M. Basil Pennington silence

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. . . all events are blessings given to us to learn from.

~ Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross silence

A loving silence has power to heal

A loving silence has far more power to heal than the most well-intentioned words.

~ Rachel Naomi Remen
Rachel Naomi Remen silence

This silence is alive, making possible a change

Coming to the red-brick church, we slip inside to rest, reflect, and lay prayerful hands on our ailing bodies. The sanctuary is empty. We sidle into pews, remove our hats, gloves, coats. Silence. Yank off our shoes. Silence.

Unlike the silence of a library with its absence of noise, of outward distractions, its rules and kindly librarians who shhhh! at you, in the empty church the silence is different. It's all about presence. Presence you can't name for what it truly is, can't see, but you can feel, if you bring your heart across the threshold of the outside world. This church could as easily be a synagogue, mosque, or a temple. There you meet yourself, and that inexpressible mystery that lies beyond you. This presence requires reverence, not obedience. We kneel at the shrine with no donation to make but our prayers -- for things beyond words, prayers of the open heart. This silence is alive, making possible a change. Silence

~ from THE EMPTINESS OF OUR HANDS by Phyllis Cole Dei and James Murray
Phyllis Cole Dei, James Murray The Emptiness Of Our Hands silence

A habit of silence

Silence as a spiritual practice is much more than being able to sit still without talking for thirty minutes or longer. Instead, silence is a quality of presence. The silence we search for is an overall state of being. It is not something we achieve with great effort, either, but something we uncover that is inside us. Somewhere at our core there is a reservoir of silence. . . . To return regularly to this depth, whether in cloistered silence or in line at the grocery, is called "a habit of silence." It is not duration that is important, but the returning time after time to the source within us that, in time, shapes who we are.

The power of silence

We come to know the power of Silence
In deep meditation; here,
True Wisdom emerges silently,
Rising up from the Mystery
Of the unseen Source within all.

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