3rd December, 2022
Wendy Beckett, Meditations on Silence (Dorling Kindersley, 1995), 36.
Image: Pavan Trikutam, unsplash.com/@ptrikutam
The short image-backed quote, above, is taken from the longer quotation, below, from Sister Wendy Beckett's Meditations on Silence (Dorling Kindersley, 1995), 36 & 38. You can read more about this book by clicking here.
'There is nothing casual about silence. In its peace it is productive. It prepares us for whatever is to come. Our bodily eyes may (or may not) be shut, but the eyes of the spirit are wide-open and watchful. Silence is, in itself, an armour. What silence principally armours us against is Babel: the endless foolish chatter, words used to confound thought, words used to ward off friendship or attachments, words as occupation. The biblical Babel was a metaphor for the loss of human ability to communicate as a consequence of the rise of different languages; but the foreignness of other tongues is a smokescreen. To express what one means, and to hear what another means: this is a rare thing. Babel is profoundly destructive of our energies. ... We have an absolute need for quiet, for the heart's wordless resting in God.'
'There is nothing casual about silence. In its peace it is productive. It prepares us for whatever is to come. Our bodily eyes may (or may not) be shut, but the eyes of the spirit are wide-open and watchful. Silence is, in itself, an armour. What silence principally armours us against is Babel: the endless foolish chatter, words used to confound thought, words used to ward off friendship or attachments, words as occupation. The biblical Babel was a metaphor for the loss of human ability to communicate as a consequence of the rise of different languages; but the foreignness of other tongues is a smokescreen. To express what one means, and to hear what another means: this is a rare thing. Babel is profoundly destructive of our energies. ... We have an absolute need for quiet, for the heart's wordless resting in God.'