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.
In this series, some posts use short quotations but offer links to associated resources in the text below the image-backed quote. In other weeks, the short, image-backed quote are taken from a more extensive quotation from the month's author, given below the image. And in the last week of the month there are questions to encourage reflection on the month's quotations.

Quotes for each week of June will appear below in ascending date order.

Martin Laird, our author for June, is an Augustinian monk and Professor of Early Christian Studies at Villenova University, Pennsylvania. He lectures and leads retreats widely throughout the United States, the UK and Ireland and is author of many books about early Christian thought and contemplative life.
Monday 6th June, 2022
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​Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land: The Practice of Contemplation (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2006), 2 .
Image: Brett Jordan, London, unsplash.com/@brett_jordan

This short quote is taken from Martin Laird's Into the Silent Land: The Practice of Contemplation (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2006), 2. You can read about this book by clicking here. Martin Laird, OSA (Order of Saint Augustine), is an English, Augustinian monk who now lives and works in the USA. He is Professor of Early Christian Studies at Villanova University, Pennsylvania, and is a renowned retreat leader and lecturer throughout the States, the UK and Ireland. In 1999 Laird completed his PhD, which focussed on the writings of Gregory of Nyssa (see here to read about this fourth-century Father of the Church) at Heythrop College, the now closed, specialist theological college of the University of London. Since then, he has written three detailed and dense books exploring silence as a spiritual discipline, which are nor for the faint-hearted!: Into the Silent Land, our source for this week's quote; A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation (Oxford University Press, 2011) - see here; and An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation (Oxford University Press, 2019) - see here.  If you'd like to hear Martin speaking, you can listen to his 50 minute podcast for WCCM, 'Sunrise at Midnight', here, in which he explores what many of the early Christian writers say about the constant presence of God - that God does not know how to be absent! 
Monday 13th June, 2022
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Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land: The Practice fo Contemplation (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2006), 3-4.
Image: istock image ID 1336245198

​The short quote in the image above is taken from the longer quote from Martin Laird, below.

'We enter the land of silence by the silence of surrender, and there is no map of the silence that is surrender. There are skills, however, by which we learn to dispose ourselves to surrender and thus to discover this uncharted land. …The practice of silence cannot be reduced to a spiritual technique. Techniques are all the rage today. They suggest a certain control that aims to determine a certain outcome. They clearly have their place. But this is not what contemplative practice does. A spiritual practice simply disposes us to allow something to take place. For example, a gardener does not actually grow plants. A gardener practices certain gardening skills that facilitate growth that is beyond the gardener’s direct control. In a similar way, a sailor cannot produce the necessary wind that moves the boat. A sailor practices sailing skills that harness the gift of wind that brings the sailor home, but there is nothing the sailor can do to make the wind blow. And so it is with contemplative practice, not a technique but a skill. The skill required is interior silence.'
Monday 20th June, 2022
Martin Laid, A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation (Oxford University Press, 2011), 20.
Image: Dim Hou, unsplash.com/@dimhou

The short quote in the image above is taken from the longer quote from Martin Laird, below, from pages 14; 15; 16; 17-18 and 19-20 of A Sunlit Absence.

​The practice of contemplation in the Christian tradition tends to emphasise the cultivation of concentration through the use of a short phrase or prayer word, often inspired by Scripture. …The basics are simple. We sit down and assume a solid, erect posture. … The body’s physical stillness facilitates interior silence, alertness, and calm. Quietly repeat the prayer word during the time of prayer. Whenever we become aware that we’ve become distracted, we bring our attention back to the prayer word. The practice is not to sit there trying to have no thoughts or only certain thoughts. Instead, we simply bring our attention back to our practice whenever we find that our attention has been stolen. The challenge lies in its simplicity. ...
 
In early seasons of practice there is typically very little sense of our abiding immersion in silence. Instead, when we try to be silent, we find that there is anything but silence. This inner noise is generated by a deeply ingrained tendency, reinforced over a lifetime, to derive our sense of who we are and what our life is about from these thoughts and feelings. This alienates us from the simple experience of thoughts and feelings. Instead we experience reactive commentaries on [them]. The ability to meet with stillness all that appears and disappears in awareness will gradually (very gradually) replace this deeply ingrained pattern of meeting experiences with reactive commentary. As our practice deepens, thoughts and feelings continue to come and go, but our relationship with them changes. … Whereas before we were caught in reactive commentary that caused us to push away or cling to the thoughts and feelings, we can now let them be, let them come, go, or stay without attending to them. …
 
As much a tangle as our practice may seem, it will begin to untangle. Something deeper begins to attract us, and this something deeper is more spacious, alluring, and silent than the tediously dramatic opera scores of inner chatter. The inner chatter will be present but its grip on our attention loosens. We can actually see through this mass of thoughts into something else in which they are immersed and saturated. Something is being born of the practice of silence, and this leads us into Silence itself.
Monday 27th June, 2022
Martin Laid, A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation (Oxford University Press, 2011), 54 & 55.
Image: Pietro Jeng, Taipei, Taiwan, instagram.com/pietrozj

This short, image-backed quote is taken from Martin Laird's book, A Sunlit Absence(OUP, 2011), 54 & 55.

The last week of each month in the 'Quoting Silence: A month with ...' series offers some questions to help you reflect further on the month's quotations and images, and how they resonate with your own spiritual journey and relationship with God.

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 the 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.
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