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.
The first week of each month has a short, image-backed quote with links to associated resources in the text below it. In other weeks, the short quote is taken from a longer one by the month's author, found below the image. The last week of the month has a short quote and questions to encourage reflection on all the month's quotations and images.
John Skinner, our author for December, was a Jesuit, journalist, children's book publisher and translator of several major texts by medieval Christian mystics.

You can read more about John Skinner's book,Sounding the Silence (Gracewing Publishing, 2004) from which this month's quotes are taken, by clicking here.

Audio resources​

Guided Meditation: for any quote
Lectio Divina: use with long quotes
​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. 
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.
Monday 2nd December , 2024
John Skinner, Sounding the Silence (Gracewing, 2004), 2.
Image: Resi Aprilianti, Indonesia, unsplash.com/@rdwiaaa 

​​​To read more about John Skinner's book, from which this month's quotes are taken, click ​here.

​John Skinner was educated by the Jesuits from the age of nine and after completing his education joined their order (see here), where he studied to become a priest. He left after 13 years, without becoming ordained, to pursue a career as a journalist at The Times newspaper, London. After five years he turned instead to children's bookselling, developing the Puffin Book Club for Penguin in 1967. In the 1970s he founded The Red House with his wife, Judith, and in 1979 began its Children's Book Club, which went on to became a well-known household name - see here. In both, John's aim was to democratise access to books for children. With Red House he created a subscription service that delivered a curated selection of books directly to people's homes or via schools - perhaps, like mine, your own was one of them? Eventually, it was bought by The Book People, who those in the UK might remember from workplaces in the 1990s and beyond. Originally called The Red House Book Award, today, the annual Children's Book Award in the UK - see here - is a lasting legacy from John Skinner's endeavours in children's publishing. 

However, John Skinner also made significant contributions to the study and accessibility of English mystics through his writings and translations. He is best known for his modern translations of important spiritual texts, including Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Love (Arthur James, 1996) - see here -The Book of Margery Kempe (Crown Publishing, 1998)- see here - and The Confessions of Saint Patrick (Doubleday, 1998) - see here. Skinner's translations of such works, which are central to understanding medieval English mysticism, aim to make these complex texts accessible to contemporary readers.

John wrote or edited a variety of books aimed at a less academic readership. You might particularly enjoy The Wisdom of the Cloister: 365 Readings from the Great Monastic Writings (Doubleday, 1999) - see here - in a collection that traverses Christian monasticism from the Desert Mothers and Fathers to contemporary mystics. He also wrote Hear Our Silence: A Portrait of the Carthusians (Fount, 1995) - see here - an illuminating book detailing Carthusian monastic life based on a fortnight living with the monks at St Hugh's Charterhouse, commonly known as 'Parkminster'  - see here, and for some stunning images see here - a community going back some 900 years. John then did much to encourage others to develop a spiritual practice of silence, saying 'I told them "I am ging to steal your silence and take it outside."'  Along with the book from which this month's quotes are taken, there is also a companion volume, Echoing the Silence (Gracewing, 2008) - see here.

Little more information about John Skinner exists. He died a few years ago and his publishers have no photograph of him.
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