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Since Holy Week of 2021 the Seeds of Silence website has posted a weekly quote about silence each Monday.. |
This week's quote: Gunilla Norris
Monday 13th January, 2025
Gunilla Norris, Inviting Silence: Universal Principles of Meditation (BlueBridge, 2004), 31.
Image: Allec Gomes, Goiȃnia, Brazil, unsplash.com/@allecgomes
The short, image-backed quote, above, is taken from this week’s longer quote, below, from pages 31-34 of Gunilla Norris’ book. To read more about the book, from which this month's quotes are taken, click here.
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Guided meditation for the short quote
For a 5 minute audio guided meditation to accompany this week’s short image-backed quote, click the play button on the image above. To pause, click in the same place.
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Listen to the longer quote
To hear this week’s longer quotation being read, click the play button on the image above. To see the image full-screen as you listen, click the expand screen icon in the corner.
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Lectio Divina for use with long quote
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 a text version of the meditation, click here.
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'In our present culture silence is something like an endangered species—an endangered fundamental. We need it badly. Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses, to our selves. It locates us. Without that return we can go so far away from our true natures that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves. We live blindly and act thoughtlessly. We endanger the delicate balance which sustains our lives, our communities, and our planet.
Can we remember our power as persons? Can we remind ourselves and others that, nurtured in silence, our awareness can lead us back to integrity and meaning? Each of us has and is a holy capability.
It may take months for us to sense that our longing has already taken the first small steps. Can we begin to notice some of the signs? How we pause before something beautiful? How we grow inexplicably silent more of the time? How our breath seeks deeper exhalation? How we close our eyes and gaze inward as if drawn to another realm? Can we catch our softening eyes when we watch our children at play, when our pets are up to their antics, when we hold the ageing hands of our parents?
These moments are hints that tell us there is something inside that doesn’t live on a schedule, doesn’t entirely define itself by accomplishing tasks or by keeping things going! This part of us trusts another dimension, the central fact of being. It already knows that simple presence is where our hearts come to peace. How strange that it takes so long to be in touch with this—the most obvious fact of our lives.
Cultivating a peaceful heart is the journey of a lifetime. When this truth comes fully into awareness we can join it—a conscious first step. We can start to be with our being.'
'In our present culture silence is something like an endangered species—an endangered fundamental. We need it badly. Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses, to our selves. It locates us. Without that return we can go so far away from our true natures that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves. We live blindly and act thoughtlessly. We endanger the delicate balance which sustains our lives, our communities, and our planet.
Can we remember our power as persons? Can we remind ourselves and others that, nurtured in silence, our awareness can lead us back to integrity and meaning? Each of us has and is a holy capability.
It may take months for us to sense that our longing has already taken the first small steps. Can we begin to notice some of the signs? How we pause before something beautiful? How we grow inexplicably silent more of the time? How our breath seeks deeper exhalation? How we close our eyes and gaze inward as if drawn to another realm? Can we catch our softening eyes when we watch our children at play, when our pets are up to their antics, when we hold the ageing hands of our parents?
These moments are hints that tell us there is something inside that doesn’t live on a schedule, doesn’t entirely define itself by accomplishing tasks or by keeping things going! This part of us trusts another dimension, the central fact of being. It already knows that simple presence is where our hearts come to peace. How strange that it takes so long to be in touch with this—the most obvious fact of our lives.
Cultivating a peaceful heart is the journey of a lifetime. When this truth comes fully into awareness we can join it—a conscious first step. We can start to be with our being.'
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.
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You can search the entire website here.
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