Silence is the beginning of peace. It is in silence that we learn that there is more to life than life seems to offer. There is beauty and truth and vision wider than the present and deeper than the past that only silence can discover… Noise protects us from confronting ourselves, but silence speaks the language of the heart.
–Joan Chittester, (1936-
Silence is the discipline by which the inner fire of God is tended and kept. –Henri Nouwen (1932–1996)
Being useless and silent in the presence of God belongs to the core of all prayer. In the beginning, we often hear our own unruly inner noises more loudly than God’s voice. This is at times very hard to tolerate. But slowly, very slowly, we discover that the silent time makes us quiet and deepens our awareness of ourselves and God. Then, very soon, we start to miss these moments when we are deprived of them, and before we are fully aware of it, an inner momentum has developed that draws us more and more into silence and closer to that still point where God speaks to us.
–Henri Nouwen (1932–1996)
We need to “find” God, who cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is a friend of silence. The more we engage in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life. The essential thing is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us.
–Saint Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)
It is a good discipline to wonder in each new situation if people wouldn’t be better served by our silence than by our words.
–Henri Nouwen (1932–1996)
You know how it is in the symphony when you are listening to the symphony, the last notes die away, and there’s often a beat of silence in the auditorium before the applause begins. It’s a very full and pregnant silence. Now theology should bring us to live into that silence, into that pregnant pause.
–Karen Armstrong (1944-
