Quoting Silence, December 2024:
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No photo exists. This is the cover of his book, from which December's quotes are taken.
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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. |
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.
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
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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 2nd December, 2024
John Skinner, Sounding the Silence (Gracewing, 2004), 2.
Image: Resi Aprilianti, Indonesia, unsplash.com/@rdwiaaa
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.
Monday 9th December, 2024
John Skinner, Sounding the Silence (Gracewing, 2004), 4.
Image: Mikael Kristenson, Sweden, unsplash.com/@mikael_k
The short, image-backed quote, above, is taken from this week's longer quote, below, on page 4 of John Skinner's book. To read more about his book, from which this month's quotes are taken, click here.
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Listen to this week's longer quote:
To listen to the longer quote, below, being read, click the play button on the small version of the image next to or below this text. To see the image full screen as you listen, click the expand screen icon in the corner. |
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'The purpose of our attending to this inner silence is to encounter our Maker – not in a once for all confrontation, or dreaded judgement: we meet our Mysterious Maker in our making, now and again now, in a continuing life-giving commerce of love, each time we come to pray. Then each moment of our day.
A recent study of spirituality in children, conducted by two sociologists from Nottingham University, revealed how the young are vividly aware of their own inner world. Each child takes their own experience very seriously – and in the main secretly – each give it their own unique signature, so that no one account is ever duplicated.
We too will have shared their fearless exploration of what it is to be human, body and spirit. We must begin again, renewing our childhood wonder at the marvels all around us and especially within.
So that Each time we pray, it is a new start and a new prayer. That is what we mean by encounter with our maker: it is to attend to our making. For we are all still in the making.'
Monday 16th December, 2024
John Skinner, Sounding the Silence (Gracewing, 2004), 54.
Image: Chris Buckwald, unsplash.com/@scorpkris
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Listen to this week's longer quote:
To listen to the longer quote, below, being read, click the play button on the small version of the image next to or below this text. To see the image full screen as you listen, click the expand screen icon in the corner. |
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'How seldom do I own my life in all its beauty. The ability to feel, hear, smell, use this pair of hands with purpose and assured dexterity. The artist does it all the while: why don’t I? When she was about seven, our daughter, Hatty, was trying much patience yet again. So I told her straight: ‘Hatty, pull yourself together, use your head! What do you think God gave you a head for?’ ‘For my senses, of course, Dad’. Her reply, swift and sure, knocked me off balance. Seven-year-old Hatty rejoiced already in the ‘fearful symmetry’* of her head. Eyes, ears, nose, tongue and taste were all hers to use: and that felt good to her.
When we first come to Silent Prayer, the senses seemed to stand in the way. Noises sound unusually loud and intrusive, my head seems buzzing with all kinds of distractions that take me everywhere rather than here, where I want to be. But after a little practise and perseverance, this will fade. My silence becomes a kind of chamber, a favourite retreat familiar to me.
As I learn to slow things down and welcome this descent inwards, the body and the senses seem to capitulate, abandoning their protest. Of course, there will be wretched days, when the whole idea seems ridiculous. But stay with it. That will pass.
When my silent prayer stills me, it brings me back to myself. I come to sense within who I really am. This is the true gift of my prayer.'
* This is a quote from lines in the first and last stanzas of William Blake’s well-known poem, ‘The Tyger’, from his Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794) . See here.
'How seldom do I own my life in all its beauty. The ability to feel, hear, smell, use this pair of hands with purpose and assured dexterity. The artist does it all the while: why don’t I? When she was about seven, our daughter, Hatty, was trying much patience yet again. So I told her straight: ‘Hatty, pull yourself together, use your head! What do you think God gave you a head for?’ ‘For my senses, of course, Dad’. Her reply, swift and sure, knocked me off balance. Seven-year-old Hatty rejoiced already in the ‘fearful symmetry’* of her head. Eyes, ears, nose, tongue and taste were all hers to use: and that felt good to her.
When we first come to Silent Prayer, the senses seemed to stand in the way. Noises sound unusually loud and intrusive, my head seems buzzing with all kinds of distractions that take me everywhere rather than here, where I want to be. But after a little practise and perseverance, this will fade. My silence becomes a kind of chamber, a favourite retreat familiar to me.
As I learn to slow things down and welcome this descent inwards, the body and the senses seem to capitulate, abandoning their protest. Of course, there will be wretched days, when the whole idea seems ridiculous. But stay with it. That will pass.
When my silent prayer stills me, it brings me back to myself. I come to sense within who I really am. This is the true gift of my prayer.'
* This is a quote from lines in the first and last stanzas of William Blake’s well-known poem, ‘The Tyger’, from his Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794) . See here.
Monday 23rd December, 2024
John Skinner, Sounding the Silence (Gracewing, 2004), 24.
Image: Matthew Osborn, Phoenix, Arizona, unsplash.com/@matthewosborn
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Listen to this week's longer quote:
To listen to the longer quote, below, being read, click the play button on the small version of the image next to or below this text. To see the image full screen as you listen, click the expand screen icon in the corner. |
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'Words. We are so accustomed to words. They fill our day, delight our ear, cause our tongues endless pleasure. As the Irish have it, ‘there’s nothing like a good craic’. And true enough, words are one of God’s greatest gifts to us. We need words to meet each other, greet and understand, console, explain, bargain, mediate – command, plead and – alas – endlessly offend. But human words are friable, they fail us at every turn. We need to reverence them like fresh baked bread, still warm from the oven. How different it is with God.
God speaks God’s Word. One single Word. Then Silence.
Word is Flesh: all is said.
In God’s Son, whom God brings forth, in God’s Word which he utters, God says All.
Creation is uttered by the Word: ‘through him all things came into being’.
Humanity is summed up in the Word: ‘the Word is made Flesh’. God’s whole creative outpouring is expressed in this One Word, God’s Son. The man we know as Jesus.
Jeshua, as Mary would have named him, was an unremarkable Jewish baby. A boy, born unnoticed during the reign of Herod. The mystery of this Word, the complete utterance of God, was cloaked in silence. Disguised as a baby? Not at all: The baby is the silent Word. He is the message. The son of God is Man – [Human]. And later on, Jesus will conflate the two, always referring to himself as the Son of Man.
Dwell in this. Son of Man. God’s own expression of [God]self, God’s Son – by whom God knows and understands all that God is – is now Man. God has taken centre stage in our human world.'
Monday 30th December, 2024
John Skinner, Sounding the Silence (Gracewing, 2004), 117.
Image: Matt Kochar, unsplash.com/@mjkochar
The last week of each month offers some questions to help you reflect further on its quotations and images, and how they resonate with your own spiritual journey and relationship with God.
You can engage with these using the written or audio versions of the questions, below.
The last week of each month offers some questions to help you reflect further on its quotations and images, and how they resonate with your own spiritual journey and relationship with God.
You can engage with these using the written or audio versions of the questions, below.
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Listen to the reflection questions:
To listen to the reflection questions, below, being read, click the play button on the 'Reflect ...' image next to or below this text. To see the image full screen as you listen, click the expand screen icon in the corner. |
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Reflection questions:
Before reflecting on this month's quotes and images, take time to re-ground yourself in your body.
Perhaps take a few slow breaths, feel your feet on the floor and be aware of how your body feels in this moment.
1) Read back over or listen again to this month's quotes and spend time looking at their associated images. As you do so, note a phrase or image that draws your attention. If this is a phrase, you might like to write this out in a journal or on a piece of paper where you will see it regularly. Consider reading aloud several times what you have written to help the words sink more deeply into your heart. If an image resonates with you, let your gaze rest lightly on it for a couple of minutes, allowing it to speak to your heart. Consider using it as a screensaver for a while, or perhaps print it out and place it somewhere that you will see it often.
2) What emerges as you sit with the phrase or image that attracted your attention? Does a new insight or a question, emotion or sensation arise? Take some time to write down and ponder on whatever you notice.
3) Where can you see hope in the midst of what is emerging in you, for yourself, your neighbour, your community, or the planet? How might this impact your daily life and those with whom you share it?
4) In the days and weeks to come, how can you stay open to what you have discovered from your reflections?
Take some time to give thanks for the hope that you have found in this month's quotes and images.