Monday 14th March, 2022
Morton Kelsey,The Other Side of Silence: Meditation for the Twenty-First Century (Paulist Press, 1997), 159.
Image: Martin Wyall, Salt Lake City, USA, liinks.co/martin.wyall
This quote is from Morton Kelsey's The Other Side of Silence: Meditation for the Twenty-First Century (Paulist Press, 1997), 159. As well as being a Professor at Notre Dame University, Indiana, USA, Morton Kelsey (1917-2001/2) was an Episcopalian priest, Jungian therapist and prolific author, writing roughly a book a year between 1964 and 1997. These addressed prayer, spirituality, healing and working with dreams - for a full list, see here. He wrote extensively about the Bible, psychology and spiritual experience, often integrating ideal from depth psychology with devotional life. For a two part interview with Kelsey where he talks about his life and spiritual journey, see here and here. For the transcription of a fascinating letter from Jung to Kelsey in 1958, which ends with the wonderful quote 'The real history of the world seems to be the progressive incarnation of the deity', see here. It's unusual that someone so prolific doesn't have a page in the Wiki encyclopedia but there is a page of quotes from his books on wikiquotes, here, many of which are really worth pondering. One I really liked was from the same book as today's quote (originally written in 1976 but much updated for the 1997 edition, referenced above): 'The inner journey is as individual as our thumbprint' (p75), which offers a healthy reminder that our journeying with silence and contemplative life will not be identical to that of others but will be uniquely ours.