Quoting Silence, June 2025:
|
|
|
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.
Carl McColman, our author for June, is well-known for writing about contemplative spirituality and mysticism. He has had a full time ministry of retreat leading and speaking over many years.
You can read more about Carl McColman's book, Befriending Silence: Discovering the Gifts of Cistercian Spirituality (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2015), from which this month's quotes are taken, by clicking here.
You can read more about Carl McColman's book, Befriending Silence: Discovering the Gifts of Cistercian Spirituality (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2015), from which this month's quotes are taken, by clicking here.
Audio resources
|
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 June, 2025
Carl McColman, Befriending Silence: Discovering the Gifts of Cistercian Spirituality (Ave Maria Press, 2015), 110.
Image: Alex Rybin, unsplash.com/@alexrybin
Carl McColman is a life-professed Lay Cistercian of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, in Conyers, Georgia, USA, under formal spiritual guidance of the monks from this community: see here to read about the monastery and here to read about lay Cistercians. Carl is an internationally renowned writer about Christian and wider spiritual mysticism, with more than a dozen books to his name. Perhaps his best known book is The Big Book of Christian Mysticism: The Essential Guide To Christian Spirituality (Hampton Roads, 2010), which has been so popular that it's been reprinted numerous times and was reissued with much additional material a couple of years ago as The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism (Augsburg Fortress Press, 2023): see here.
Carl's other books range from a daily reader in Celtic spirituality, 366 Celt: A Year and a Day of Celtic Wisdom and Lore (Element, 2005) - see here - to his brand new Read the Bible Like a Mystic: Contemplative Wisdom and the Word (Broadleaf Books, 2025) published this month: see here for info and reviews and see here for quite a good chunk of sneak preview! There are also a range of books on wisdom, food for heart and soul, and mysticism, including an delightful-sounding book, The Lion, The Mouse and The Dawntreader: Spiritual Lessons from C. S. Lewis's Narnia (Paraclete Press, 2011), for those of you who are fans of this wonderful series: see here.
You can read more about Carl on his website, Anam Cara (soul friend), here, which also has a list of all of his many books and an option to sign up for his emails, designed to support contemplative spiritual practices. You can receive one email a week as a free service and 3-4 as a paid for subscription series. You can also read Carl's occasional blog posts on Patheos, a site hosting numerous spirituality blogs that's well worth exploring, here.
For those of you who prefer listening or watching teaching, Carl also co-hosts the wonderful Encountering Silence podcast - see here, or search your usual podcast source - with Cassidy Hall and Kevin Johnson, a series that aims to 'Explore the beauty, importance, and vitality of silence'. Or you can watch a variety of interviews with Carl on YouTube. Click here for a wide selection that are a few minutes long or here for a selection that includes a number of much longer interviews.
Monday 9th June, 2025
Carl McColman, Befriending Silence: Discovering the Gifts of Cistercian Spirituality (Ave Maria Press, 2015), 19-20.
Image: Dmitry Ganin, Novosibirsk, Russia, unsplash.com/@ganinph
The short, image-backed quote, above, is taken from this week's longer quote, below, on pages 19-20 of Carl McColman's book. To read more about his book, from which this month's quotes are taken, click here.
The short, image-backed quote, above, is taken from this week's longer quote, below, on pages 19-20 of Carl McColman's book. To read more about his 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. |
|
'While spiritual gifts are blessings freely bestowed upon us by God, practices are the means by which we accept those gifts and seek to live by their blessing. What does this look like? Let’s take silence, for example. The sheer existence of silence is a gift, a blessing from God. To truly appreciate it, however, we need to ensure that we make time for silence in our lives. Anyone can notice silence; even secular meditation exercises like mindfulness-based stress reduction invite us to be aware of silence. But when we choose to pray in a silent way, we are responding to the gift of silence with a meaningful spiritual practice, a freely embraced way of accepting God’s gift.
Remember this. Every gift from God invites us to greater intimacy with God—not as something we achieve or earn but something we may simply accept. The steps we take in response to the gifts we receive are how we say yes to God’s love.
Life is a gift, filled with many blessings, large or small, ordinary or extraordinary. The entire Cistercian way of life is a charism, a gift from God. The next time you feel tempted to tell God you have everything under control, take a deep breath and look for the gifts God continually bestows upon you … gifts given to you by God. I invite you to humbly receive these gifts.'
Monday 16th June, 2025
Carl McColman, Befriending Silence: Discovering the Gifts of Cistercian Spirituality (Ave Maria Press, 2015), 106-107.
Image: Logan Voss, Los Angeles, USA, unsplash.com/@loganvoss
The short, image-backed quote, above, is taken from this week's longer quote, below, on pages 106-107 of Carl McColman's book. To read more about his 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. |
|
‘Efforts to pray in silence often seem like trying to find God through a kaleidoscope: an ever-evolving, ever-changing pattern of thoughts, feelings, images, ideas, distractions, and passions. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Our creativity, our zest for life, our understanding of faith and the values that give life meaning all tumble together within our inner kaleidoscope. But jumbled together with these are the fears, anger, old wounds, jealousies, trivialities, lusts, addictions, and sins that keep us enmeshed in a kind of inner prison. We are created in God’s image, but we are also wounded—in other words, every human being contains the capacity for profound love and goodness but also for sin, addiction, and alienation. We truly are chaotic—at least at the level of thoughts and feelings. But beyond the kaleidoscope of our inner turmoil lies deep and profound silence, the silence where we can discern the holy presence (even if it remains hidden from our awareness). It is the silence where “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:7).
As chaotic as our hearts and minds may appear, God’s peace remains always stable. The Holy Spirit invites us to gently set aside our attachments to our interior drama so that we might rest in God’s unchanging stability. This is the heart of contemplation. Just as silence encompasses both external silence (the absence of noise) and internal silence (the cultivation of inner rest and mental calm), likewise contemplation points to both an exterior stability (“being still” and knowing God) and an interior stability (resting in the silence that never changes, beneath the noisy dynamics of the “cocktail-party” mind). This inner, spiritual stability of God’s ever-present, unchanging, merciful silence, remains always available to us between and beyond the turmoil of our thoughts and passions.’
Monday 23rd June
Carl McColman, Befriending Silence: Discovering the Gifts of Cistercian Spirituality (Ave Maria Press, 2015), 113.
Image: Tatiana Rodriguez, Maryland, USA, unsplash.com/@tata186
The short, image-backed quote, above, is taken from this week's longer quote, below, on page 113 of Carl McColman's book. To read more about his book, from which this month's quotes are taken, click here.
The short, image-backed quote, above, is taken from this week's longer quote, below, on page 113 of Carl McColman's book. To read more about his 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. |
|
'Contemplative prayer does not replace the other essential spiritual practises like lectio divina or the Divine Office. In fact, contemplation needs to be anchored in other Christian disciplines to maintain its character as a silent form of prayer—otherwise, a daily practise of intentional silence amounts to little more than mindfulness meditation (which is not a bad thing, but it lacks the spiritual meaning and purpose that contemplative prayer entails).
See if you can foster a daily practise of intentional, attentive silence given prayerfully to God. When you embrace silence, you may find that you more consciously recognise that God is present in your life, even if you don’t “feel” or “experience” that presence.
Christian contemplatives embrace silence to embody love. Both the ability to enter into silence, and the capacity to receive and share God’s love, comes to us through grace. It’s not something we achieve: it’s something we receive, and the benefits of this grace emerge over time, which is why a regular (ideally daily) commitment to silent prayer is so important.
“Be still and know that I am God” [says] Psalm 46:10. Contemplation is a way to respond to this call. Try it today. Be still and know.'
Monday 30th June, 2025
Carl McColman, Befriending Silence: Discovering the Gifts of Cistercian Spirituality (Ave Maria Press, 2015), 111.
Image: Dvaid Kuvaev, Bali, unsplash.com/@dkuva
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.
You can engage with these using the written or audio versions 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.