Skip to main content

Silence

Lent Study Group

One of my top 10 books of the last 10 years has to be:

'A Book of Silence' by Sara Maitland.

I first heard Sara talk at Greenbelt many years ago and I was fascinated then by who she was - an eccentric woman, speaking with intensity and insight, offering an alternative and captivating viewpoint on the human experience.

In this book she explores silence in all sorts of ways: by living on her own; by visiting the desert; through analysing the desert traditions within early Christianity; and through attending to what happens to the body and the mind in and through extended silence and isolation.

Her book begins:

I am sitting on the front doorstep of my little house with a cup of coffee, looking down the valley at my extraordinary view of nothing. It is wonderful. Virginia Woolf famously taught us that every woman writer needs a room of her own. She didn't know the half of it, in my opinion. I need a moor of my own. Or, as an exasperated but obviously sensitive friend commented when she came to see my latest lunacy, 'Only, you, Sara - twenty-mile views of absoloutely nothing?'

Later on she writes (p. 221):

I started to think that perhaps silence is God. Perhaps God is silence - the shinning, spining ring 'of pure and endless light'. Perhaps God speaking is a 'verb', an act, but God in perfect self-communication, in love within the Trinity, is silent and therefore is silence. God is silence, a silence that is positive, alive, actual, and of its 'nature' unbreakable. Perhaps the verb 'God' - speaking, creating- is one more reflex of the infinite generosity, the self-giving abandonment, the kenotic love of God.


Read the extracts above, you may wish to consider:

How do you respond to the idea that God is silence?
How can silence be positive, alive and actual?
How comfortable are you with silence?
Can you spend more time in silent prayer each day?


True Peace

A brother asked abba Poemen, 'How should I behave in my cell in the place where I am living?' He replied, 'Behave as if you were a stranger, and wherever you are, do not expect your words to have any influence and you will be at peace'.

(Daily readings with the Desert Fathers, Benedicta Ward)



Spend some time with these 2 passages from scripture:

Luke 6:12 

'Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God'.

Matthew 14:23

'And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came he was there alone.'


A Prayer

Loving Jesus,
You were often alone,
Seeking your Father's will,
Interceding for us:
In the aloneness of our hearts,
Through the long shadow of our fear,
Bring your healing grace
And set us free. Amen 


https://www.theschoolofmeditation.org/




Comments

  1. Thank you Silence is hard for me so this enforced distancing from people and not being so active and noisy should teach me a lot I pray

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Please be respectful when posting comments

Popular posts from this blog

Radical Story-telling?

Public Domain   The Flight into Egypt  File: Adam Elsheimer - Die Flucht nach Ägypten (Alte Pinakothek) 2.jpg Created: 31 December 1608 Which of the Gospel writers include an account of the birth of Jesus? When were they writing, for what audience? Mark’s Gospel is almost universally considered to be the earliest Gospel and it’s understood that both Matthew and Luke used it as a source text. But Mark has no account of the birth of Jesus, he begins with John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism. Only Matthew and Luke have birth narratives and they are different whilst sharing some common features: Mary and Joseph are to be married and there’s a miraculous virgin birth in Bethlehem. But that’s about it. Jesus is born in a house in Matthew’s account whilst he is placed in a manger in Luke’s because there’s ‘no room at the inn’. Mary’s thoughts and feelings are not mentioned in Matthew at all, whilst from Luke we get the story of the Visitation, Annunciation and the wonderful radical

Christmas Video Message

Text version- Hello from St Andrew’s Church in Rugby , where once again I’m surrounded by Christmas trees. This year there are a couple that pick up the WW1 remembrance theme using poppies as decorations. 2014 has been a significant year for the UK and for Europe as we’ve reflected on the significance of the first and the second world wars. The not uncontroversial Sainsbury’s advert reminded the nation that the story of Christmas can do extraordinary things; even in war it can unite enemies, as in the famous Christmas Day truce in 1914. At Christmas we do enter a mystical moment, a moment of opportunity, where the message of God’s love and care for each one of us comes really close. The vulnerable child, the nativity scenes, the bringing of gifts, they tell us that we can still believe in the power of love to transform human experience. At Christmas 1914 on the Western front, some soldiers dared to look their enemies in the face and wish them happy Christmas. In our soci