Silence: A User's Guide

Silence: A User's Guide, the first of a major two-volume work, exposes the processes by which silence can transfigure our lives - what Maggie Ross calls 'the work of silence'; it describes how lives steeped in silence can transfigure other lives unawares. It shows how the work of silence was once understood to be the foundation of the teaching of Jesus, and how this teaching was once an intrinsic part of Western Christianity; it describes some of the methods by which the institution suppressed the work of silence, and why religious institutions are afraid of silence. Above all, this book shows that the work of silence gives us a way of being in the world that is more than we can ask for or imagine.

'Today we are bombarded by so much noise - the blare of loudspeakers in our shopping malls, the roar of motorbikes, the screeching of cars, on our highways, the banging of doors, a veritable cacophony of noise, all a mad turbulent rush. But sometimes we have the joy of silence - when we have been quiet and discovered how it all helped us to be creative, to think deeply. Two people in love often discover they have communicated wordlessly and deeply as they sat quietly and their spirits have embraced and kissed in the pregnant silence. 'Maggie writes out of a long and deep experience of silence. She is a sure guide, authoritative and scholarly - her bibliography is formidable. What a splendid gift to God's children everywhere.' Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town. 'Maggie Ross brings an extraordinary combination of practicality, scholarship and prayerful reflection to this remarkable book. Readers cannot fail to profit fromits many explorations, which lead to a passionate, iconoclastic and cheering affirmation of the centrality of silence in our meetings with God.' Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church, University of Oxford.

Maggie Ross is an Anglican solitary under vows to the Archbishop of Canterbury.