Meister Eckhart, the German mystic, once said, "Nothing in all creation is so like God as silence." In this lyrical and sturdy paperback, Gunilla Norris, a meditation teacher and psychotherapist in private practice, presents her ideas on finding silence and establishing a meditation practice. We may yearn for quiet times but lack the discipline to develop and sustain the experience of cultivating a peaceful heart. To do so, we must set aside our notions of making things "come out right." The challenge is to return to the sacred self which lies buried under all our hyper-activities: "The paradox is that we must stop, feel, and grow silent in order to receive the gift of ourselves even while we still hang on to the belief that things are up to us, that we are in change."
Norris, the author of Being Home and Journeying in Place, always has demonstrated a keen sense of everyday spirituality, so it's quite natural that she would encourage us to find stillness in the midst of our hectic lives — when we are waiting in a doctor's office, on the telephone, or in a traffic jam. She counsels us to take advantage of these moments of silence and use them to bring us back to our senses. She also suggests setting aside a room for silence where we can honor and invite "the unknown, the untamed, the wild, the shy, the unfathomable — that which rarely has a chance to surface within us."
Best of all, Norris advocates shared silence as an opportunity to bond with others and to be in solidarity with those who are suffering. This fine paperback is an invitation to integrate silence into our lives before it becomes an even more endangered resource.
