For further reflection:

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Below are some of the quotes from the talk, and some additional quotes, for you to reflect on further:

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Sue Monk Kidd:

"The fullness of one's soul evolves slowly. We're asked to go within to gestate the newness God is trying to form; we're asked to collaborate with grace. … waiting provides the time and space necessary for grace to happen. Spirit needs a container to pour itself into. Grace needs an arena in which to incarnate. Waiting can be such a place, if we allow it."

She goes on to write:

"Crisis, change, all the myriad upheavals that blister the spirit and leave us groping - they aren't voices simply of pain but also of creativity. And if we would only listen, we might hear such times beckoning us to a season of waiting, to the place of fertile emptiness. ... In the stayed-ness of waiting we find everything we need in order to grow. Suspended upside-down in the heart of the question, we touch the sacred spaces of real becoming."

 

In his book Into the Silent Land Martin Laird wrote:

"Silence lays bare this wound that seems to be with us for life and brings us face to face, "eye to eye" with what feels like nothing at all. In this spaciousness we wash in "the lovers' well" and discover that what may strike the senses as nothing at all, is paradoxically an overflowing fullness, an emptiness ever thronging. Silence alone will lead us to this discovery."

 

Thomas Merton:

"The true contemplative is not one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but is one who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect to anticipate the words that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and, when he is “answered,” it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself, suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God."

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Adyashanti:

"The letting go into eternity may require courage, but even more it requires the deepest relaxation—the relaxation of a lover relaxing into the arms of her beloved. In this sense it is an act of love. Simply be still; that is quite enough. When the time is right it will happen, you can be assured of this.”

 

James Finley:

“A green apple cannot ripen in one night by tightening all its muscles, squinting its eyes and tightening its jaw in order to find itself the next morning miraculously large, red, ripe and juicy beside its small green counterparts. Like the birth of a baby or the opening of a rose, the birth of the true self takes place in God's time. We must wait for God, we must be awake; we must trust His hidden action within us.”

 

Marian Scheele:

"When the soul is occupied with looking away from present trials into the face of Christ, and making this a regular and passionate occupation, this soul will become more tranquil and still and therefore more able to reflect the Being it adores. This reflected glory will enable us to love our neighbor as ourselves. The only effort required is the giving up of all effort."

 

St. Teresa of Avila: 

“Those who are able to practice the prayer of recollection will receive the water of the fountain”. ... “It is called recollection because the soul collects together all the faculties and enters within itself to be with its God. It’s Divine Master comes more speedily to teach it, and grant it the Prayer of Quiet."