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 Main, our author for June, was a Roman Catholic priest and Benedictine monk who is remembered worldwide as the originator of the Christian meditation movement that today we know as the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM).

You can read more about John Main's book, Word into Silence (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1980), from which this month's quotes are taken, by clicking here.
Guided Meditation to use with short and long quotes:
​For a 5 minute audio guided meditation to use with each week's quote, click the play button on the image. To pause, and restart, click in the same place. To see the image full screen as you listen, click the expand screen icon in the corner.
Lectio Divina to use with longer quotes:
​For an audio guided Lectio Divina to use with this week's longer quote, click the play button on the image. Allow 10-15 minutes for this practice. 
​​​To pause, and restart, click in the same place. ​
​For a text version of the Lectio Divina meditation, click the button.
Monday 3rd June, 2024
John Main, Word Into Silence (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1980), 51.
Image: Nat, Wales, unsplash.com/@nattgw 

​​​To read more about John Main's book, from which this month's quotes are taken, click here.
 John Main (1926-1982) was born in London and christened Douglas William Victor, the fourth of six children in a Roman Catholic family. After being educated at the Jesuits' Westminster Choir School he began training for the Catholic priesthood, first in Ware, England, and then at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican theological institution in Rome: see here. Beginning to doubt his calling, Main moved to Dublin and studied Law at Trinity College, before joining the British Colonial Service as a Civil Servant in 1954. During a short stint in Kuala Lumpur, Maine met Dr Swami Satyananda (1909-61), a Hindu monk who founded the Pure Life Society, an interreligious, intercultural movement dedicated to the promotion of universal spiritual values, education and charitable service: see here. The Swami taught Main how meditate, using a Christian word as a mantra - a repeated word or short phrase - as a path to inner stillness. 

Three years after returning to Dublin as a Professor of Law in 1956, Main joined Ealing Abbey, a Benedictine monastery, where he took the name 'John' in honour of the Apostle. Ordained as a priest in 1963, Main was reluctant to share his meditative practice with others until, nearly 20 years after beginning this, he discovered the same practice described in the Conferences of John Cassian (c.360-after 430), one of the Desert Fathers - see here - whilst working as the Headmaster of St Anselm's Abbey School in Washington, D.C.  Returning to Ealing Abbey in 1974, John Main began to host Christian meditation groups in the monastery's grounds. His assistant was Laurence Freeman, who is now widely known as the Director of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM - see here). WCCM was founded in 1991, building on the legacy of Main's teachings and the Benedictine community of monks and lay people dedicated to the practice and teaching of Christian meditation that, together, Main and Freeman establish in 1977 at the invitation of the Diocese of Montreal. Today, WCCM is a global organisation with national coordinators in nearly 70 countries.

John Main has been widely acknowledged as one of the key spiritual teachers of recent decades, particularly for his work in recovering and transmitting a universal, contemplative practice for use in daily life by lay, ordained and religious alike. Perceiving meditation to be at the heart of the Gospel message, but also a universal wisdom practice, he built strong bridges between Christianity and all the world's major religions.

For a lovely gallery of images from the 56 years of John Min's life, see here. If you scroll down the same page you will find links to numerous brief talks to listen to before a period of silent meditation, as well as lots of 15-20 minute talks. Lower down, you'll find links to all the books by and about John Main. Click here for a 25 minute meditation led by John Main, and click here for a 20 minute youtube video of Laurence Freeman talking about John Main. For an hour-long presentation about John Main given by Stefan Reynolds at St Giles' Church, Oxford, click here. Stefan Reynolds also wrote an article about 'Hindu mantra meditation and Christian contemplative prayer: Swami Satyananda (1909-1961) and John Main (1926-1982)', which you can read here. In 2005 a John Main Centre for Meditation and Inter-religious Dialogue was established at Georgetown University: read more about this here.
Monday 10th June, 2024
John Main, Word Into Silence (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1980), 28.
Image: Marek Piwnicki, Poland, unsplash.com/@marekpiwnicki
​The short, image-backed quote, above, is taken from this week's longer quote, below, on pages 28-29 of John Main's book. ​​​​To read more about this book,  from which this month's quotes are taken, click here.
​​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.

'In the silence of our meditation, in our attentiveness to the Other, in our patient waiting, we find our own spirit. The fruit of this discovery is very rich. We know then that we share in the nature of God, that we are called ever deeper into the joyous depths of [God’s] own self-communion, and this is no peripheral purpose of the Christian life. In fact, if it is Christian, and if it is alive, our life must place this at the very centre of all we do and all we aim to do. “Our whole business in this life”, said Saint Augustine, “is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen.”* This eye is our spirit. Our first task, in the realization of our own vocation and in the expansion of the kingdom among our contemporaries, is to find our own spirit because this is our life-line with the Spirit of God. In doing so, we come to realize that we participate in the divine progression and that we share the dynamic essence of God’s still point: harmony, light, joy and love.
 
To fulfil this destiny we are called to transcendence, to that continuous state of liberty and perpetual renewal, that complete passing into the other. In our meditation we begin to enter this state by the renunciation of our words, images, thoughts and even self-consciousness, everything which is in itself contingent, ephemeral, tangential. In meditation we must have the courage to attend solely to the Absolute, the abiding and the central. To find our own spirit, we must be silent and allow our spirit to emerge from the darkness to which it has been banished. To transcend we must be still. This stillness is our pilgrimage and the way of the pilgrim is [meditation].'

*Sermons (de Script, N.T.), 88 v 5.
Monday 17th June, 2024
John Main, Word Into Silence (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1980), 71.
Image: Alexander Dummer, unsplash.com/@4dgraphic
​The short, image-backed quote, above, is taken from this week's longer quote, below, on pages 71-72 & 73 of John Main's book. ​​​​To read more about this book,  from which this month's quotes are taken, click here.
​​​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.

'Language may not be able to lead us into the ultimate communion but it is the atmosphere in which we first draw the breath of consciousness. It expands our consciousness and leads us to silence, but only in and through silence do we become fully conscious.
 
As an example of this somewhat abstract point, let me turn to the idea of our personal harmony. As an idea we have to talk about it in language. Language uses words. Words have meaning to the extent that they do not mean something else and so to talk about harmony we must analyse, distinguish, separate. By personal harmony I mean the integration, the perfect co-operation of mind and heart, body and spirit. But when I talk about them like this, as separate entities, am I not suggesting that they actually work independently of each other? Of course you know and I know that they do not work for themselves but they work for the whole. If I hear some joyful news I feel that joy in my body, I know it in my mind, and it expands my spirit. All these things happen, they are altogether my response, my involvement in what is happening to me. It is not that my body is telling my mind something or that my mind is communicating something to me through body language. I am a whole person and I respond wholly.* 

We know that we are this whole person, this harmony and yet we do not know it because this knowledge has not yet become fully conscious. Perhaps we could say that the conscious harmony that lives in perfect joy and liberty at the centre of our being has not yet expanded and spread itself throughout our being. To allow it to do so we must simply remove the obstacle of narrowly self-conscious thought, self-important language. In other words we must become silent. If a man really did know himself as body-mind-spirit, as the harmony of these three, then he would be on the way to making that knowledge fully conscious throughout his whole being. But modern man, at any rate, has lost the knowledge of his spirit and confounded it with his mind. As a result, he has lost that sense of his own balance and proportion as a creature which should lead him into the creative silence of prayer. …
 
The way to become fully conscious of this essential harmony of our being is to be silent. And to meditate is to be silent. The harmony of our essence, our centre, then, as it were blossoms and diffuses itself throughout every part and molecule of our being. … [73] It is for us to recognise and accept it, and this we do, not by being clever or self-analytical, but by being silent, by being simple. The gift is already given. … Meditation is simply our way to knowing it.'
* See 1 Corinthians 12: 12–26.​
Monday 24th June, 2024
John Main, Word Into Silence (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1980), 79.
Image: Thom Holmes, York, UK, unsplash.com/@thomholmes

​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 text or the audio version of the questions, below.
​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.

​​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.
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