Quoting Silence, May 2025:
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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.
Sister Jeremy Hall, OSB, our author for May, was an American Benedictine nun who lived as a hermit in her later life. She became renowned as a retreat leader and wellspring of wisdom, and on the back-cover info of our book for this month is described as being 'allergic to sentimentality' .
You can read more about Sister Jeremy Hall's book, Silence, Solitude, Simplicity: A Hermit's Love Affair with a Noisy, Crowded, and Complicated World (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2007), from which this month's quotes are taken, by clicking here.
You can read more about Sister Jeremy Hall's book, Silence, Solitude, Simplicity: A Hermit's Love Affair with a Noisy, Crowded, and Complicated World (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2007), 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 5th May, 2025
Sister Jeremy Hall, Silence, Solitude, Simplicity: A Hermit's Love Affair with a Noisy, Crowded, and Complicated World (Liturgical Press, 2007), 111.
Image: Peter Herrmann, Leverkusen, Germany, unsplash.com/@tama66
To read more about Sister Jeremy Hall's book, from which this month's quotes are taken, click here.
Sister Jeremy Hall, OSB (1916-2006), was a Roman Catholica Benedictine nun who lived most of her adult life at St Benedict's Monastery in St Joseph, Minnesota (see here). As with a number of our authors, little information exists about many aspects of her life. She was awarded a Doctorate in theology from Marquette University in 1971 (see here for the book written from her PhD work), and taught theology at Creighton University and the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University. In her early days she was considered 'radical', 'way out there' and 'ahead of her time', travelling to India to meet Mother Teresa, with whom she corresponded. But she was initially concerned that changes brought in following Vatican II in 1962 had gone too far.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s Sr. Jeremy took a sabbatical and several lengthy retreats at the Benedictine Monastery of Christ in the Desert in Abiquiu, New Mexico (see here), where the monks live a life of Ora et Labora (prayer and work) with the goal of living a contemplative life so free from all attachments that relationship with God becomes their central and even perhaps exclusive relationship. This way of life had a impact on Sr. Jeremy who, as a result, increasingly sought more time for prayer and solitude.
Soon after, in her late-60s, Sr. Jeremy became a vowed hermit, living from 1983-2005 in a trailer caravan at the edge of St. Benedict's with her dog. However, like many hermits, she didn't disappear from engagement with the world but became a sought-after retreat leader amongst religious communities, a spiritual director to many and, as Thomas Merton before her, a prolific writer of letters, articles and meditations. When people spoke about Sr. Jeremy they talked about her being tough talking, in phrases like 'She took her God straight up' and 'She didn't tolerate and bullshit when it came to God', whilst others described how genuine she was, emphasising her wisdom and her kindness. It's said that people lit up when they talked about her but, at the same time, couldn't quite seem to get a handle on what it was they wanted to say about her (see here).
In the last year or so of her life, when failing mobility required her to use a wheelchair, Sr Jeremy moved to live at St. Scholastica Convent, a nearby and sister convent to that which had been her home. She is reported to have found this radical change to living back in community and, in particular, needing to be dependent on others for so much, to be difficult after the solitude of the previous two decades. Her book, Silence, Solitude, Simplicity: A Hermit's Love Affair with a Noisy, Crowded, and Complicated World, from which our quotes for this month are taken, was published posthumously in 2007 after her death in November 2006. You can read the first three chapters of the book, and a little more towards the end, here.
Monday 12th May, 2025
Sister Jeremy Hall, Silence, Solitude, Simplicity: A Hermit's Love Affair with a Noisy, Crowded, and Complicated World (Liturgical Press, 2007), 72.
Image: Kevin Kurek, Hamburg, Germany, unsplash.com/@kevinkurek
The short, image-backed quote, above, is taken from this week's longer quote, below, on pages 72-73 of Sr. Jeremy Hall's book. To read more about her 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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‘We need to be clear what silence is not. In the first place, silence is not just an absence of speech or sound or noise, any more than peace is merely an absence of conflict. Silence has its own being, its own reality, its own richness, its own presence, and its own nurturing power. True silence is an affirmation, not a negation, and is the precondition of true reverence for speech. Just as there is “a time to speak,” there is also “a time to be silent” (Ecclesiastes 3:7).
Second, true silence is not to be confused with its counterfeits, its defamations. Most have known at some time or other the destructive silence of someone’s bitter refusal to communicate—the so called “silent treatment.” Further, we have known, by either observation or experience, the silence that simply cuts another off in disdain, rejection. And we have experienced the silence that is merely empty, nervous, useless.
Third, silence is not an end in itself. Exterior silence is for interior quiet, and both aspects of silence are for the word, all dimensions of the word. The word—whether it be the divine Word, human words, the word of the indwelling Spirit in our own hearts, or “the word” in the sense of communication in the arts or the created world—the word has its origin in silence. It can only be heard in silence, and if it is to be effective and fruitful, it must rest in that receptive silence and be nurtured to maturity there.
What, then, is real silence? It is a positive receptivity, a creative waiting, a welcome openness. It is openness to God, to our deepest selves, to others, both as individual persons and as the human community, to beauty and truth and goodness, to mystery—and to the word of scripture that reveals God, and to the Word who is God’s Son. The word that brought the created world into being was spoken out of the creative silence of God.’
Monday 19th May, 2025
Sister Jeremy Hall, Silence, Solitude, Simplicity: A Hermit's Love Affair with a Noisy, Crowded, and Complicated World (Liturgical Press, 2007), 74.
Image: Federico Artusi, unsplash.com/@fedeartu
The short, image-backed quote, above, is taken from this week's longer quote, below, on pages 72-73 of Sr. Jeremy Hall's book. To read more about her 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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'Silence is for loving receptivity and response to all the ways God chooses to be manifest to us. But silence is also a loving attentiveness and receptivity to our own true selves. It takes quiet and silence to know one’s own depths, to open the successive doors to the very centre of our being, to our “heart” in Biblical language. It may be a long journey, and it may take us years to get there, but isn’t that what life is given to us for—to get to the Promised Land? And quiet and silence are our guides.
At the beginning of the journey I am preoccupied with myself at the most superficial level. I call it an ego trip in others and judge it there as terribly immature, shallow narcissism; but I don’t even realise when I am in that state myself. If I go a little farther into my own consciousness, I begin to recognise the ego self, the superficial self, and all its games and subterfuges. I am invited to face my self-centeredness, the unworthy motivations and petty ambitions, the little meannesses, and all the rest of the trivial and sometimes nasty thoughts and reactions and schemes. When I am willing to open that door and take a good look, I recognise a kind of “slavery in Egypt,” a mindless succumbing to forces that are not truly myself, because I do not want to pay the price of freedom. …
Opening this door is not a pleasant experience; the key is silence, and I’d rather throw it away. I want to avoid at almost any cost a real look at that stratum of my being. And hence I want distraction, excitement, noise, anything to catch and divert me from facing the threatening desert within.
But, thank God, that level is not really the depth of ourselves. If I am true to authentic silence, even in that desert of my ego, if I accept the pain and radical honesty about it and acknowledge my need, the silent God will open new depths. At first I may have only glimpses, but I come little by little—unless God chooses another time table—to recognise my true self, that centre of my being where the three-person God indwells me as gift of baptism, where I am the image of the living, loving, creative God. I come more and more to want to live always at this heart of my being. Here I am quiet enough to hear the constant echoing of God’s word and God’s work, and to hear it deeply enough to let it shape me from inside out. This is no ego trip, but a coming out of Egypt to glimpse the Promised Land; this is a flowering of the desert.'
Monday 26th May, 2025
Sister Jeremy Hall, Silence, Solitude, Simplicity: A Hermit's Love Affair with a Noisy, Crowded, and Complicated World (Liturgical Press, 2007), 114.
Image: Jaanus Jagomägi, Tallin, Estonia, unsplash.com/@jaanus
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.