Several of the books I am currently reading are converging on a similar idea: the value of practicing times of silence. In a recent book the Path of Life, Benedictine monk Cyprian Smith talks of sitting silently when he feels overwhelmed or discouraged. Another contemporary, Richard Foster, a Quaker theologian, (in Sanctuary of the Soul) as well as seventeenth-century wife and mother Madam Jeanne Guyon (in Experiencing God Through Prayer) describe ways in which they practice silent meditation to counter the busyness of life.
(Was life stressful and busy four hundred years ago as well? I thought our generation had invented stress!)
Maybe quiet reflection has always been a rare practice! Seventeenth-century French theologian and writer Francois Fenelon (quoted in Sanctuary of the Soul) explains: "God does not cease speaking, but the noise of the creatures without, and of our passion within, deafens us, and stops our hearing. We must silence every creature, we must silence ourselves, to hear in the deep hush of the whole soul, the ineffable [indescribable] voice... We must bend the ear because it is a gentle and delicate voice, only heard by those who no longer hear anything else."
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