Chapter 8 - Silence

Chapter 8 cited 7 scripture passages to focus on the value of silence as a help in our ability to hear what God may be trying to say to us (with my personally assigned title for each passage):

Revelation 3: 20-22 (Listening enables hearing).
James 3: 1-12 (Guard the tongue).
Ecclesiastes 5: 1-3 (Listening beats talking).
I Kings 19: 9-13 (The still, small voice).
Psalm 46 (Be still to know God’s presence).
John 10: 1-15 (Knowing the Shepherd’s voice).
Habakkuk 2: 20 (Silence in God’s presence).

The hymn for the week was "Still, Still with Thee” by Harriet Beecher Stowe. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Tilden H. Edwards, M. Basil Pennington, Dom Helder Camara, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John White, Richard J. Foster, Susan Annette Muto, Thomas R. Kelly, Thomas Merton, Anthony Padovano and Henri J. Nouwen. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

• “…the only path to life, to freedom, to peace, to true love…begins with silence.”
• “…the grace You grant me of silence without loneliness, …to clamour for my brothers imprisoned in a loneliness without silence!”
• “Silence is the very presence of God – always there. But activity hides it. We need to leave activity long enough to discover the Presence – then we can return to activity with it.”
• “…the religion instructor at a Christian high school decided to introduce silent meditation into one of his classes. He gave the students instructions simply to ‘be’ during the silence: to be relaxed and awake, open to life as it is, with nothing to do but appreciate whatever comes. Week by week he slowly increased the amount of time to a maximum of ten minutes. …One boy summarized the general feeling of the class: ‘It is the only time in my day when I am not expected to achieve something’.”
• “The Word comes not to the chatterer but to him that holds his tongue. The stillness of the temple is the sign of the holy presence of God in His Word. …Silence is the simple stillness of the individual under the Word of God. …Silence is nothing else but waiting for God’s Word and coming from God’s Word with a blessing. …(It) is something that needs to be practiced and learned. Real silence, real stillness, …comes only as the sober consequence of spiritual stillness.”
• “(God) is more anxious to speak to us than we are to hear him.”
• “The disciplined person is the person who can do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.”
• “Silence can be an escape… But it can also be an opening to God.”
• “Silence becomes like a creative space in which we regain perspective on the whole.”
• “We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them… .”
• “ ‘Father’ sometimes becomes the only word silence allows as we express inexpressibly all we feel and want and reach for.”
• “…silence is the discipline by which the inner fire of God is tended and kept alive. …Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts.”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 8 not quoted) mean to you? I look forward to your responses.

John