Quoting Silence, September 2023:
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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.
Anne LeClaire, our author for September, is widely known as a best-selling novelist, who began her writing career as a journalist and has worked in this capacity for a variety of America's top publications.
Read more about Anne LeClaire's book, from which this month's quotes are taken, by clicking here.
Read more about Anne LeClaire's book, from which this month's quotes are taken, by clicking here.
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Guided Meditation for all 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. |
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Lectio Divina 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. |
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Monday 4th September, 2023
Anne D. LeClaire, Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence (HarperCollins, 2009), 17.
Image: Lucas Sankey, Redding, California, unsplash.com/@lucassankey
This week's short image-backed quote is from Anne D. LeClaire's Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence (HarperCollins, 2009), 17. To read more about this book, click here.
Anne D. LeClaire was born in 1942. The 'D' used in her name refers to 'Dickinson': she is a cousin of the famous poet, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). Anne was raised on a farm in a small town in Massachusetts, where she was the family 'story-teller'. Since graduating from College in Ohio, LeClaire has lived on the enigmatic Cape Cod, known for the stunning beauty of its hundreds of miles of sandy coastland, as well as being a home to many of the USA's well-known authors and artists. In her early career, Anne worked as a reporter for radio, a newspaper columnist and a news broadcaster, and her journalistic writing was often featured in internationally renowned publications such as the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Yankee magazine. In the mid-1980s, LeClaire's focus for writing turned towards novels and her first, Land's End (Bantam Books) was published in 1985. She is now the author of 10 novels, including acclaimed titles, The Halo Effect (Lake Union, 2017) - see here - The Law of Bound Hearts (Ballantine, 2004) - see here - and Entering Normal (Orion, 2001) - see here. For more about LeCLaire's novels, see here and to read about Anne in her own words, see here.
However, on a day in 1992, Anne decided to have a day of not speaking; a day of what she thought of as 'silence'. Her book, Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence (HarperCollins, 2009) is her story of how silence on the first and third Mondays of each moth began to change her life in ways that she describes as more transformative than motherhood, marriage or therapy. You can listen to a 55 minute radio interview with Anne in 2018, talking about the transformative power of silence, here. As well as continuing her days of silence, until very recently, she lectured about the gift that silence can be. For a short, 10-minute excerpt of her discussing silence, see here. Anne has also been a renowned teacher of writing and the creative process, leading workshops all over the world.
However, on a day in 1992, Anne decided to have a day of not speaking; a day of what she thought of as 'silence'. Her book, Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence (HarperCollins, 2009) is her story of how silence on the first and third Mondays of each moth began to change her life in ways that she describes as more transformative than motherhood, marriage or therapy. You can listen to a 55 minute radio interview with Anne in 2018, talking about the transformative power of silence, here. As well as continuing her days of silence, until very recently, she lectured about the gift that silence can be. For a short, 10-minute excerpt of her discussing silence, see here. Anne has also been a renowned teacher of writing and the creative process, leading workshops all over the world.
Monday 11th September, 2023
Anne D. LeClaire, Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence (HarperCollins, 2009), 34.
Image: Hideki Nishiyama, Japan, unsplash.com/@nishiyama
This short image-backed quote is from the longer text, below, in Anne D. LeClaire's Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence (HarperCollins, 2009), 30, 31-2 & 34.
To read more about this book, 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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'The soul, Jung said, is inexorably driven to seek balance. Today, for most of us, life is seriously out of balance. … Too many of us have bought into the idea that the pursuit of happiness is in fact the pursuit of pleasure. Somehow we have become estranged from quiet and have developed not only a low tolerance for it, but an almost outright fear of it. …
It’s as if we have come to believe that silence is a void that must be filled whatever the cost. We no longer know how to be still. We no longer know how to be alone. We seem to require constant and relentless input. We are addicted to sensory overstimulation. This addiction comes at a tremendous cost, physically, psychologically, and spiritually. It leaves us depleted, exhausted, and depressed. It negatively impacts our health, distances us from intimacy, and severs our connections with our internal selves. …
But our spirit has an instinct for silence. Every soul innately yearns for stillness, for a space, a garden where we can till, sow, reap, and rest, and by doing so come to a deeper sense of self and our place in the universe.'
Monday 18th September, 2023
Anne D. LeClaire, Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence (HarperCollins, 2009), 47.
Image: Ben White, Michigan, USA, unsplash.com/@benwhitephotography
This short image-backed quote is from the longer text, below, in Anne D. LeClaire's Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence (HarperCollins, 2009), 46-47. To read more about this book, 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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All was fine and dandy when silence sparked creativity and restored me, when it slowed me down and made me more attentive to the world around me, but now that it had made me more aware of the world within, I felt ambushed, my feet tripped by the underbrush and brambles of neglected space. Small wonder we avoid solitude and stillness, I thought. … Small wonder we fill our days with activity and every form and fashion of noise or that everywhere in our culture addictions provide means for disengaging from ourselves. … Who in her right mind wants to sit quietly and pay attention to what dwells within? …
Within each of us there resides our own muddy, messy space, our inner garbage heap where we toss scraps too painful to consider or confront, the loss, pain, grief, and disappointment that are all too real. In the hollow of our hearts resides the fault lines of our lives, the lies we tell ourselves to get by, and the space where narcissistic aspects of personality can arise. When we weed out extraneous stimulation and let go of the reins of control, these things claim our attention. …
It is silence that allows us the space and stillness in which to think about our motives, to examine our behaviour, to see where we’ve fallen short. It is only when we drag our smallest, shabbiest parts into the light that we can move towards becoming whole.'
All was fine and dandy when silence sparked creativity and restored me, when it slowed me down and made me more attentive to the world around me, but now that it had made me more aware of the world within, I felt ambushed, my feet tripped by the underbrush and brambles of neglected space. Small wonder we avoid solitude and stillness, I thought. … Small wonder we fill our days with activity and every form and fashion of noise or that everywhere in our culture addictions provide means for disengaging from ourselves. … Who in her right mind wants to sit quietly and pay attention to what dwells within? …
Within each of us there resides our own muddy, messy space, our inner garbage heap where we toss scraps too painful to consider or confront, the loss, pain, grief, and disappointment that are all too real. In the hollow of our hearts resides the fault lines of our lives, the lies we tell ourselves to get by, and the space where narcissistic aspects of personality can arise. When we weed out extraneous stimulation and let go of the reins of control, these things claim our attention. …
It is silence that allows us the space and stillness in which to think about our motives, to examine our behaviour, to see where we’ve fallen short. It is only when we drag our smallest, shabbiest parts into the light that we can move towards becoming whole.'
Monday 25th September, 2023
Anne D. LeClaire, Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence (HarperCollins, 2009), 139.
Image: Joachim Schnürle, unsplash.com/@joa70
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.
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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.
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.