Quoting Silence, August, 2026:
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A post throughout each week of the month, offering quotes and resources linked to one contemporary author who writes about silence and its role as a spiritual discipline. |
Different weeks of the month offer different resources, as below:
- first week: a short, image-backed quote with links to associated resources in the accompanying text
- middle weeks: a short, image-backed quote taken from a longer one by the author, found below the image
- last week: a short quote and questions to encourage reflection on all the month's quotations and images
John Lane, our author for August, was a painter, writer and educationalist, with a lifelong interest in contemplative spiritualities.
You can find out more about his book, The Spirit of Silence: Making Space for Creativity (Green Books, 2006), from which this month's quotes are taken, by clicking here.
You can find out more about his book, The Spirit of Silence: Making Space for Creativity (Green Books, 2006), from which this month's quotes are taken, by clicking here.
Audio resources
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For a 5 minute audio guided meditation to use with each week's short quote, click play on the image. To pause and restart click the same place.
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An audio guided Lectio Divina for the longer quotes. Click play on the image above. Allow 10-15 minutes for this. For a text version, click the button.
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Monday 3rd August, 2026
John Lane, The Spirit of Silence: Making Space for Creativity (Green Books, 2006), 98.
Image: Ahmad Odeh, Ramallah, Palestine, unsplash.com/@aoddeh
John Lane (1930-2012) was born in Croydon, UK, and after training at the well-known Slade School of Art and the University of London's Institute for Higher Education, became a teacher, first in schools and later at Bretton Hall College of Education in West Yorkshire, whose grounds are now the sight of the world-renowned Yorkshire Sculpture Park: see here.
After moving to Devon, John was heavily involved in a variety of leading arts establishments in the region. In 1966 he founded the Beaford Arts Centre in rural North Devon, which still runs today as Beaford Arts, and continues to manage the foundational cultural assets initiated in Lane's era, including the Beaford archive, a collection of more than 80,000 photographs of Devon life over a 120 year period: see here. John was also instrumental in the creation of Schumacher College - a pioneering centre for ecological, holistic, and transformative education focused on sustainability, systems thinking, and regenerative living: see here - and the touring repertory theatre group, Orchard Theatre: see here. For many years John Lane was also Chairman and a Trustee of Dartington Hall Trust, a charitable educational and rural regeneration organisation which, for decades, has been an internationally famous hub for artists and thinkers: see here. He also founded Resurgence magazine which, 20 years ago, evolved into the Resurgence Trust, an educational charity promoting ecology, social justice and wellbeing: see here.
Lane lectured and conducted workshops internationally on the subject of the arts and spirituality, and was the author of a variety of books, varying in their subject matter from celebrating the medieval woodcarvings of Devon's churches - see here - to the art of ageing well in a positive way - see here. The books for which he is known best include The Living Tree: Art and the Sacred (Green Books, 1988) - see here - and Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society (Green Books, 2001) - see here.
Towards the end of his life, John suffered a catastrophic stroke, which left him paralysed, but with a mind as active as ever. There are no publicly accessible video or audio recordings of John Lane but you can find a small, posthumous website about him, here.