He [the skilled speaker] fills your ears with what they like and does not force you to listen to what does not please you. If he notices from your expression that you are not listening anymore.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life
Category: SILENCE
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Silence is not always a virtue….
Sometimes we are judged guilty for keeping quiet…
The issue requires wisdom, so that we know when to speak and when to keep silent, and if we speak, then what words to use.
The wise man is one who does not remain silent when he should speak and does not speak when he should remain silent.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life -
‘In addition to his other virtues, Abba Philimon possessed this characteristic: he would never listen to idle talk. If someone inadvertently said something which was of no benefit to the soul, he did not respond at all. When I went away on some duty, he did not ask: “Why are you going away?”; nor, when I returned, did he ask: “Where are you coming from?” Or “What have you been doing?”
A Discourse on Abba Philimon -
Why do we keep hiding our deepest feelings from each other? We suffer much, but we also have great gifts of healing for each other. The mystery is that by hiding our pain we also hide our ability to heal. . . . We are called to confess to each other and forgive each other, and thus to discover the abundant mercy of God. But at the same time, we are so terribly afraid of being hurt more than we already are. This fear keeps us prisoners, even when the prison has no walls! I see better every day how radical Jesus’ message of love really is.
—Henri Nouwen -
Of one thing I am sure. Complaining is self-perpetuating and counterproductive. Whenever I express my complaints in the hope of evoking pity and receiving the satisfaction I so much desire, the result is always the opposite of what I tried to get. A complainer is hard to live with, and very few people know how to respond to the complaints made by a self-rejecting person. The tragedy is that, often, the complaint, once expressed, leads to that which is most feared: further rejection.
—Henri Nouwen -
“Silence stands outside the world of profit and utility; it cannot be exploited for profit; you cannot get anything out of it. It is ‘unproductive’ Therefore it is regarded as valueless. Yet there is more help and healing in silence than in all the ‘useful things.’ Purposeless, unexplainable silence suddenly appears at the side of the all-too-purposeful, and frightens us by its very purposelessness. It interferes with the regular flow of the purposeful. It strengthens the untouchable, it lessens the damage inflicted by exploitation. It makes things whole again, by taking them back from the world of dissipation into the world of wholeness. It gives something its own holy uselessness, for that is what silence itself is: holy uselessness.”
—Max Picard
SO GOOD QUOTES 