In May 2022, a new quote series began, called 'Quoting Silence: A month with ... '.
In this series, we stay with quotes from one author throughout a whole month.
In this series, we stay with quotes from one author throughout a whole month.
To access the Quoting Silence Collection, which contains the entire back-catalogue of quotes and their additional resource links, click the buttons at the bottom of this page.
This week's quote
Monday 22nd April, 2024
Andrew Norman, Silence in God (SPCK, 1990), 123.
Image: Selvan B, unsplash.com/@selvan548
The short, image-backed quote, above, is taken from this week's longer quote, below, on pages 123-124 of Andrew Norman's book. To read more about his book from which all this month's quotes are taken, click here.
Guided Meditation:
For a 5 minute audio guided meditation to accompany this week's short image-backed quote, above, click the play button on the smaller version of the image next to or below this text. 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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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 a primordial quality. Scientists speculate that before the big bang that marked the beginning of the universe, there existed a centre of intense mass and energy. Our minds imagine a surrounding environment of utter emptiness. Christian thinkers have reasoned even more fundamentally that God created the world ex nihilo, out of nothing. Thus "older than the mountains" must be the silence of the primordial nihilo. Both the scientist and the theologian might say that we, and the whole natural world, have emerged out of silence. Others will continue – though not the Christian – by saying that in death we return to a total silence. But to us all the underlying existence of this primordial nihilo may seem frightening, threatening to crush our fragile human forms. Nevertheless, I have tried to suggest that silence is actually a medium in which we may come to experience God. But in doing this I have not wanted to pretend that silence is always comfortable and positive. It seems to me that often it is frightening. Silence has an unknown depth. The apparent loss of form and language easily makes us panic, for our feet can no longer feel the bottom, and we fear that we will drown in a gulf of meaninglessness. It is not surprising that we instinctively tend to cover our silence and hide from it. However, if God can be described as the ground of our being, it may be in silence that we are able to come closest to that primordial source of all life.
So it is that we may find silence to have a purity, a special transparency of God, which is simply self-diminishing for us to deny. Silence allows us access to a form of experience which, far from being merely an esoteric concern for the mystically inclined, is fundamental to what it means to be human. Silence puts us in touch with that from which we have emerged, that in which (however unknowingly) we are rooted.'
To view all quotes & materials for Quoting Silence: A month with Andrew Norman, click the largest image-backed quote above or the button below.
To receive each Monday's 'Quoting Silence: A month with ... ' email,
click the button below.
click the button below.
The Quoting Silence Collection
To go to the collection of more than 50 different image-backed quotes about silence, each from a different author, and with links to associated resources, please click the button below.
The 'Quoting Silence:
A month with ... ' Collection
From May 2022 the 'Quoting Silence: A month with ... ' quotes are building into a new collection over the year. From this collection, you'll be able to access all the quotes and resources from any month by clicking the button.
To go to this new collection, click the button below.
To go to this new collection, click the button below.
You can search the entire website here.
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