Quoting Silence, September 2024:
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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.
Rachel Muers, our author for September, is a life-long Quaker, a current member of the World Council of Churches Faith and Order Commission, and an academic theologian whose first book, from which this month's quotes are taken, delves deeply into philosophy and ethics and is a profound and challenging read: definitely not for the faint-hearted!
You can read more about Rachel Muers' book, Keeping God's Silence: Towards a Theological Ethics of Communication (Blackwell Publishing, 2004), from which this month's quotes are taken, by clicking here.
You can read more about Rachel Muers' book, Keeping God's Silence: Towards a Theological Ethics of Communication (Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 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 2nd September , 2024
Rachel Muers, Keeping God's Silence: Towards a Theological Ethics of Communication (Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 4.
Image: Harald Pleissnig, Klangenfurt, Austria, unsplash.com/@pliessnig
Rachel Muers is a cradle-Quaker, born into a Quaker family and remaining deeply committed to this community , and identifying within it as a Christian - which not all Quakers do - throughout her life. You can find out more about the Quakers here and about Woodbrooke, which offers lots of wonderful online courses and events rooted in silence, here.
After 15 years at the University of Leeds, where Rachel was Professor of Theology, in 2022 she was appointed as the Chair of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh - a post which is one of the oldest at the University, going back to 1620. It is incredible to know that she is the first woman to hold this post in over 400 years! This achievement indicates something of the high esteem with which Rachel is regarded within the academic theological community, and gestures towards the significance of her writing in the area of the relationship between modern Christian doctrine and ethics. You can watch her hour-long inaugural lecture for this post, 'Divine Among the Humanities: "Idle Decoration" or "Water of Life"?' by clicking here.
Rachel describes herself as a theologian who is 'passionate about the importance and relevance of our subject' within the context of both wider society and academia and, in seeking to speak into these different communities, 'tries to listen across boundaries - disciplinary, confessional, and institutional'. She has written and researched extensively on both twentieth century Christian history and on developing new responses from within theology to urgent, contemporary questions. A prime example of this was her role as the Principal Investigator for a research project, 'Vegetarianism as Spiritual Choice in Historical and Contemporary Theology', and the book of collected essays which emerged from it, Eating and Believing: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Vegetarianism and Theology (Bloomsbury, 2008): see here.
Those of you who would be interested in finding out a little more about Quaker theology in particular might like to view her 45 minute 2023 George Richardson Lecture, 'The Seed and the Day of Small Things: Finding Power & Powerlessness in Quaker Theology', which you'll find here.
For a shorter and easier to access offering from Rachel, and particularly for those who enjoy art, you might like to explore her virtual exhibition for the Visual Commentary on Scripture project. Rachel's contribution, 'Handwork', focuses on three images that depict hands, for which she provides written commentaries, all of which you can hear narrated by another contemporary academic theologian, Ben Quash. See here.
You can find a list of books by Rachel here, but be aware that they are all are intended for scholars in theology and ethics and so will be a dense and demanding read.
Monday 9th September, 2024
Rachel Muers, Keeping God's Silence: Towards a Theological Ethics of Communication (Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 4.
Image: Danielle-Claude Bélanger, Quebec, Canada, unsplash.com/@dcbelanger
The short, image-backed quote, above, is taken from this week's longer quote, below, on page 4 of Rachel Muers' 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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This quote begins with a text from the New Testament: Revelation 8:1, NRSV.
‘"There was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour.” Silence is both something we encounter or discover – the silence of a deserted place, an empty room – and something we do, and experience done by others – conversational silences, silences in response to questions. Silence is found, and silence is made; but often these two appear difficult to separate. Even Revelation’s “silence in heaven” is made by those who fall silent – the angels, the singers, all the others whose voices and sounds have been heard so far – but it is then encountered by the writer and the reader as something that exceeds any of those performances of silence. We hear, not “they fell silent,” but “there was silence.” When we speak of keeping silence, we point to this relationship between silence as a reality we find and silence as a part of our communicative activity; silence, the idiomatic expression suggests, is in some sense “already there,” for us to discover and keep.
The fact that silence can be treated as both a part of conscious communicative activity and as a feature we discover in the world makes a phenomenological approach particularly helpful [in] an attempt to talk about silence; an approach that centres on silence as something intended and experienced by the human mind, without needing in the first instance to determine its “objective” and “subjective,” its found and made, components. Examining silence from this perspective can give us a starting point for talking about silence as something not reducible to speech – or sound – or to its absence.'
Monday 16th September, 2024
Rachel Muers, Keeping God's Silence: Towards a Theological Ethics of Communication (Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 11.
Image: Denise Sonnemberg, Lisbon, unsplash.com/@dsonnemberg
The short, image-backed quote, above, is taken from this week's longer quote, below, on pages 11-12 of Rachel Muers' 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 neither the absence of speech nor its equivalent. It does not differ from utterances in the way that they differ one from another, and it does not differ from them as simply their negation or their absence, and yet it is in some way related to them. A very similar account of the relations of “difference” between God and creation underlies the practice of apophatic theology* – not simply denying all creaturely attributes of God, but denying even their negation.
The paradox here is that to say silence is in some way “like” God is apparently to say nothing of what God is “like.” It is, rather, to indicate how God’s nature transcends our way of comprehending it. More than this, it is, within the patristic and medieval traditions of negative theology, to say that God’s nature is as such incomprehensible; not, then, that we happen not to have the right set of verbal or conceptual tools, but that the subject matter itself [i.e.God] cannot be spoken or conceived. Saying that God is silent, or that “nothing is so like God as silence,” is, for these theologians, not only saying something about our own inability to comprehend God; it is saying something about who God is in Godself, even if it is a paradoxical “something,” a something that does not enable us to claim comprehension of God.'
*Apophatic theology (also known as 'negative theology') is a theological approach that emphasizes describing God by negation — stating what God is not rather than what God is. It holds that because God is transcendent and beyond human comprehension, any positive descriptions or concepts we might apply to God are inherently limited and inadequate. Apophatic theology is often contrasted with cataphatic theology ('positive theology'), which attempts to describe God by affirming divine attributes, such as 'God is love' or 'God is omnipotent'. These two approaches are seen as complementary in many religious traditions.
Monday 23rd September, 2024
Rachel Muers, Keeping God's Silence: Towards a Theological Ethics of Communication (Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 12.
Image: jija, unsplash.com/@dijaluvr03
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.
Monday 30th September, 2024
This week we are pausing the weekly quote.
Instead, below there is a message from the Seeds of Silence Advisory Board.
Instead, below there is a message from the Seeds of Silence Advisory Board.
Image: Brett Jordan, London, unsplash.com/@brett_jordan
Greetings to you, and thank you for your interest in the 'Quoting Silence' weekly posting, as well as for all your involvement with Seeds of Silence.
Please excuse us if we pause the Quote this week, to give us a chance to ask for your support, and offer you the opportunity to play a vital part in this work.
For the last few years Alison Woolley, the founder and director of Seeds of Silence, has written her own letter to you inviting donations for the ministry offered by SoS. This year, two of her Advisory Board - Christine Crabtree and Paul Booth - are writing. We can perhaps be a bit more forthright on her behalf!
Seeds of Silence is a ministry of faith. It receives no funding from any church or denomination. It relies on donations to enable Alison to offer all that she does. This includes:
- preparing and hosting six Silence Spaces a month on Mondays
- the weekly quote (which I’m sure you agree is thoroughly resourced and creatively presented in a variety of forms)
- regular Silence Forums and Clinics
- the monthly Silence Reading Group
- the annual and hugely popular SoS Advent Calendar
- occasional introduction and training sessions in the practice of silence as a spiritual discipline
- AND – breaking news – later this week Alison will be launching Voices from Silence - a new, monthly series, so look out for this email on Friday!
We, as the SoS Advisory Board, find it hard to see Alison working so hard but receiving so little financial reward. ‘The worker deserves to be paid’ (Luke 10:7 & 1 Tim 5:18). So we are asking you, unashamedly, to please prayerfully consider making a donation to Seeds of Silence – either a one-off donation or, if you can, a regular monthly amount, which would help Alison plan ahead for the future.
To be honest, the ministry will struggle to continue, let alone expand, without more donations. If you value the ministry of SoS, please consider this carefully. Thank you.
You can make your donations by Bank Transfer or Standing Order and can find bank details for this here.
If you are a UK tax payer, you can GiftAid your donations through The Annunciation Trust, using the reference ‘Woolley SoS’. Please complete and return the GiftAid form, here, to increase your donation to Alison by 25%, at no extra cost to you. You can find out more about the Annunciation Trust here.
Thank you so much for reading this, and for your interest in Seeds of Silence.
Christine & Paul