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Is silence the best form of communication?

In advance of the Catholic church’s World Communications Day, yesterday Pope Benedict gave an interesting address reflecting on the role of the internet and social networks in our world.  He argued that there were considerable benefits and potential to social networks, but also warned of their limitations.

In today’s already busy world, he worried that the internet can produce relentless chatter:

“Search engines and social networks have become the starting point of communication for many people who are seeking advice, ideas, information and answers. In our time, the internet is becoming ever more a forum for questions and answers – indeed, people today are frequently bombarded with answers to questions they have never asked and to needs of which they were unaware.”

But, there can be huge pluses too:

“Ultimately, this constant flow of questions demonstrates the restlessness of human beings, ceaselessly searching for truths, of greater or lesser import, that can offer meaning and hope to their lives.”

Interestingly he then argued the cases for specific forms of communication, hinting that potentially Twitter has a significant role to play:

“Attention should be paid to the various types of websites, applications and social networks which can help people today to find time for reflection and authentic questioning, as well as making space for silence and occasions for prayer, meditation or sharing of the word of God. In concise phrases, often no longer than a verse from the Bible, profound thoughts can be communicated, as long as those taking part in the conversation do not neglect to cultivate their own inner lives.”

The greatest advantage of the internet and social networks, however can be found if it is balanced with time for contemplation and reflection.  For an address based upon the subject of communication, Pope Benedict dedicated much of his time on the benefits of silence.  In his view silence is an integral element of communication; in its absence, words rich in content cannot exist. For only through silence are any of us better able to listen to and understand ourselves.  It is in the space that silence provides that ideas come to birth and acquire depth and we choose how to express ourselves.  By remaining silent we allow the other person to speak, to express him or herself.  It is then that space is created for mutual listening, and deeper human relationships become possible.

For he believes: “It is often in silence, for example, that we observe the most authentic communication taking place between people who are in love: gestures, facial expressions and body language are signs by which they reveal themselves to each other. Joy, anxiety, and suffering can all be communicated in silence – indeed it provides them with a particularly powerful mode of expression. Silence, then, gives rise to even more active communication, requiring sensitivity and a capacity to listen that often makes manifest the true measure and nature of the relationships involved.”

So, what do you think?  Can communication best be helped by networks such as Twitter, or does silence provide the best form of interaction?

Read all of Pope Benedict’s address at http://press.catholica.va/news_services/bulletin/news/28688.php?index=28688&lang=en#TRADUZIONE%20IN%20LINGUA%20INGLESE

Tamsin Outhwaite picks Women Who Run With The Wolves

In today’s My Six Best Books slot in the Daily Express, actress Tamsin Outhwaite has picked Rider title Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes as one of her favourite titles:

“A nourishing book all about wisdom, insight, love and living for the moment.  It tells you not to shy away form being the most powerful woman you can.  I was a tomboy as a child.  This made me feel feminine and proud to be a woman.”

Mark Tully on the Indian economy

India and its economy have been back in the headlines today with the news that its industrial production increased in December 2011, suggesting that, along with China, it is riding out the recession hitting the West. 

But Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz has urged caution as he believes that India doesn’t have a clear plan for economic development: “There is no clear roadmap for where India is going today. Fifty years from now, does it see itself much as it is today - a divided country, with the rich much richer, the poor perhaps a little better than they are today? Does it see itself evolving like the US, where even the middle class has not been sharing in the gains of growth?”

In his recent book, India: The Road Ahead, the economy is one of Sir Mark Tully’s main focuses.  Speaking to Indian economists, based both in India and the West, he found there is reason for optimism for the country’s economic prospects.  As a conversation with Ram Gopal Agarwala, who worked on econometric models of the British and Canadian economies before joining the World Bank, illustrated, IT is providing a huge spark in the Indian economy and building of the foundations of the removal of the license permit Raj.  Ram’s optimism for the future also relied on the fact that he felt that India had a young labour force, which could be even further expanded if women came into it, and that education was constantly improving.  He listed India’s high savings rate, its need for massive investment in housing and infrastructure, which could attract Asian investment, and the services it could now export because of the internet as huge positives.

However, is its potential being overstated?  Most famously, in 2003, British economist Jim O’Neill of the investment bank Goldman Sachs, wrote his BRIC report which heralded that India’s economy would grow faster than that of any other major country between 2015 and 2050.

In the introduction to India: The Road Ahead Tully urges a more measured view.  He quotes the work of William Nanda Bissell, a leading businessman and author of Making India Work, who warns against a ‘culture of short-sighted optimism both at home and abroad’.  He went on ‘From glowing references in Tom Friedman’s bestseller The World is Flat to the new India to the gushing adulation heaped on its businesses by the Western media, India is constantly fed by an establishment drunk on visions of grandeur.’

So where does the truth lie?  Will India continue to rely on the belief that the winds are so favourable it can simply sail ahead?  Sir Mark argues for a middle road - he believes there is room for optimism and, like Ram Agarwala, India has a lot going for it.  But to fulfil its potential to become an economic superpower, there are many steps ahead.

Sir Mark will be returning to the UK at the beginning of February and you can hear him discuss India’s future in two events:

Thursday 2nd February - 7.15pm - Wanstead Library - Tickets £5 available from the lirbary 020 8708 7400 or Newham Books 020 8552 9993

Wednesday 8th February - 6pm - Leicester Central Library 

Moon Time

Moon Time by Johanna Paungger and Thomas Poppe

Monday 9 January brings with it the first full moon of 2012. Have you ever wondered how the moon influences our lives? Authors Johanna Paungger and Thomas Poppe explain how to tune into the cycles of nature in their internationally acclaimed books Moon Time and The Art of Timing.

To find out more, visit their blog at www.wisdom-keeper.com and watch Johanna explain how her upbringing as the daughter of a Tyrolean mountain farmer has inspired her work and life.

Mindfulness on Radio 4 Today Programme

This morning The Today Programme on Radio 4 ran an interesting segment on mindfulness and whether it can be scientifically proven to be good for your health.  Culture correspondent David Sillitoe visited the London School of Economics and King’s College to analyse the effect of mindfulness on pain relief and discover if the root to a happier new year is, for a few minutes each day, silence.  You can listen again on http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9671000/9671158.stm

This is something that Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, would certainly agree with.  His classic work in the area, The Miracle of Mindfulness, was first published in 1975 and continues to be a popular bestseller today.  Within this book he declares:

“Mindfulness frees us of forgetfulness and dispersion and makes it possible to live fully each minute of life.  Mindfulness enables us to live.”

For anyone inspired by the Today Programme to try mindful meditation, Thich Nhat Hanh recommends learning how to control your breathing as the path to mindfulness:

“You should know how to breathe to maintain mindfulness, as breathing is a natural and extremely effective tool which can prevent dispersion.  Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.  Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.

Breathe in lightly a fairly long breath, conscious of the fact that you are inhaling a deep breath.  Now breathe out all the breath in your lungs, remaining conscious the whole time of the exhalation.  The Sutra of Mindfulness teaches the method to take hold of one’s breath in the following manner: ‘Be ever mindful you breathe in and mindful you breathe out.  Breathing in a long breath, you know, “I am breathing in a long breath.”  Breathing out a long breath, you know, “I am breathing out a long breath.” Breathing in a short breath, you know, “I am breathing in a short breath.”  Breathing out a short breath, you know, “I am breathing out a short breath.”

“Experiencing a whole breath-body, I shall breathe in,” this you train yourself.  “Experiencing the whole breath-body, I shall breathe out”, thus you train yourself.  “Calming the activity of the breath-body, I shall breathe in,” thus you train yourself.  “Calming the activity of the breath-body, I shall breathe out”, thus you train yourself.”

Angel Awakenings

“It was a bitterly cold night when Barbara drove to her sister’s house to deliver Christmas gifts. Barbara would be away from home for the Christmas period, which she had mixed feelings about as she would miss her family. Maybe Barbara lost concentration at that moment … whatever the cause, she found her car sliding on the icy road and hitting a wall with force.

As she lay seriously ill in hospital that night, the medical staff delivered a gloomy prognosis. Slowly, however, she began to improve. Miraculously, only days after the accident, Barbara was able to chat with her family.

One morning the nurse who was attending her remarked on how well she was recovering. Barbara said that she felt that the beautiful music they had played to her must have helped. Puzzled, the nurse replied that no one had played music for her at any time.  ‘I was certain it came through the window from your office,’ Barbara told them. The nurse pointed out that the window in question faced outside, and they were six stories up! ‘It must have been the angels,’ Barbara declared and, to her surprise, the nurse simply nodded in agreement.”

Angels to Watch Over Us

Today’s extracts are some more angelic offerings from Glennyce Eckersley:

“Ever since she could remember, stars had fascinated Sarah. She would implore her mother to leave her bedroom curtains open, so that she could fall asleep with the stars twinkling down at her. Living in the country, with no major cities for miles, made the night sky spectacular.

 One night, just before Christmas, Sarah stared at the night sky through her large bedroom window.  The night was cold and clear, and the velvet sky was full of stars.  With her imagination fired, she decided to get out of bed in order to get a closer look and to decide which route Santa’s sleigh would take. Shivering a little, she climbed onto the rather high window sill.

Full of mounting excitement at the thought of Christmas Eve, she gave a little jump for joy, and found herself catapulting backwards from the window sill, yelling as she fell towards the hard floor. She did not, however, come into contact with the floor, but instead was conscious of a floating sensation and gentle arms placing her into bed. She recalls that the bed was several feet from the window, too far for her to have simply fallen back into it. No-one was in the room and it was several seconds later that the bedroom door opened and her mother appeared to find out what the matter was.

Switching on the light, she came and sat on her daughter’s bed.‘Did you have a bad dream?’ she asked. Sarah told her what had happened, but her mother would not believe it was real.‘Simply a dream, darling’ was all she said. Sarah knew even at that young age that it was definitely not a dream. She went to sleep, but on waking the next morning noticed that the toys that normally sat on the window sill were scattered on the floor – proof at least that she had stood on the window sill, and dislodged them in her fall.

Twenty years later the events of that night are as clear as if they had happened recently, and no-one will ever convince Sarah that she was not rescued by angel arms that night long ago.”

Desmond Tutu’s Christmas Eve message

Taken from God Is Not a Christian this extract describes a sermon given by Archbishop Desmond Tutu during a Christmas visit to Jerusalem in 1989:

On Christmas Eve, Tutu preached at a carol service at Shepherds’ Field, outside the village of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem, where residents were conducting a tax strike against the Israeli authorities as part of the first intifada, the Palestinian campaign of civil disobedience against Israeli occupation which had begun in 1987. The service drew thousands of Palestinians who, despite the presence of Israeli troops, turned the event into a demonstration in support of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

“Something stupendous, earth-shattering, happened in Bethlehem that first Christmas night: God’s promised Messiah, God’s own Son, was born in Bethlehem, and who were the first to be told the good news? It was not the high priest, not the king or his courtiers; it was shepherds watching their flock by night. Our people in South Africa love that story because it says shepherds are actually more important than the world thinks. Certainly, shepherds are important for God. Or even more wonderfully, the story says that God has a special caring for those whom the world thinks are not important. That God sides with those whom the world despises.  That God sides with those whom the world brutalizes. That God is with those whom the world oppresses.”

Mark Tully’s Indian Christmas

The first of today’s extracts is by ex-BBC Bureau chief in Delhi, Sir Mark Tully, who describes his first Christmas in the city in 1965:

“A few weeks later, it was Christmas and I went to midnight mass in the Anglican Cathedral. After Independence in 1947 the Anglicans in South India united with the Methodists and some other Protestant Churches to form the Church of South India.  By that Christmas of 1965 negotiations for a similar union in North India were well under way. These unions were based on a compromise reached through the Indian tradition of dialogue and discussion, of listening and learning from each other, and it’s now some sixty years since they were agreed. In contrast, Anglicans and Methodists in England have still not come together.

The yellow sandstone cathedral was constructed in the dying days of the Raj, after the capital had been moved to Delhi from Kolkata. The building owes a lot to Lord Irwin, the Viceroy between 1926 and 1931, who has been described as a man of ‘singular and exemplary piety’. He not only raised funds for the cathedral but often came to check on the progress of the builders and to discuss the plans with the architect. As the Viceroy was an Anglo-Catholic, he was particularly pleased that the cathedral was designed for the High Church tradition of worship. Judging by the building’s gloomy interior, its lofty roof and its altar distanced from the congregation by a long chancel, the architect clearly intended that the emphasis of worship in it would be on mystery, on the transcendental, and with particular reverence for the sacrament.

Although the Church of North India was on the verge of a merger which Anglo-Catholics in Britain criticised for sacrificing certain basic Catholic principles to reach a compromise with the Protestants, I think that Lord Irwin would still have found much that was familiar in that midnight mass of 1965. The sense of mystery was preserved, with the priest celebrating the mass in sparkling white and gold vestments, and clouds of fragrant incense pouring from the censer vigorously swung by an acolyte. However, I was surprised to see turban-wearing Sikhs, as well as Hindus, among the congregation packed into the cathedral. I had come from a Britain where my Roman Catholic friends would never attend a service with me, and I had rarely been to any service that was not Anglican. It was obvious that not only were Christians of different denominations welcome in Delhi’s cathedral but also those who were not Christians at all.

Rather than the consecrated wafer and wine, these individuals were given a blessing when they came up to the altar rails. But that did not always satisfy them. A priest told me later that he had had a prayer book thrown at him once when he refused communion to a non-Christian. And on another occasion that same priest gave in when a Hindu came to the altar rails for a second time and begged for a wafer, saying, ‘I need it, I need it, I must have it!’ It is understandable that Hindus and Sikhs should expect to receive the Christian sacraments when they visit churches and cathedrals, as everyone who visits their temples and gurudwaras is offered prasad, or food that has been blessed, and it would be an insult not to accept it.

The multi-faith congregation at that midnight mass was my first indication of India’s religious pluralism and enthusiasm for the festivals of all faiths.”

Taken from India’s Unending Journey by Mark Tully

Margrit Coates’ angelic Christmas

Our second Christmas extract is taken from Margrit Coates’ Angel Pets and describes a magical encounter with some roe deer:

“It was the first Christmas at home after my mother died, and my sister and I were not looking forward to it. Christmas focusses you on members of your family and when they are not there the loss is especially difficult to bear. Over the years we had fallen into the habit of celebrating on Christmas Eve in the European way, as my mother used to do in her homeland.  We would dress up in our best clothes and have a special meal whilst playing seasonal music. On Christmas Day, in the morning, we would open our presents before going for a walk, then back to watch some favourite TV programmes whilst eating home-made cake.

Waking up that Christmas Eve morning, I felt a raw ache inside me. Yes, my mother had been back to see me several times since her passing, but I wanted the physical pleasure of giving her a lovingly selected gift which would make her smile and say, ‘Thank you, darling. Happy Christmas!’ Pulling open the curtains, I saw them. By the edge of the white frost-covered lawn, lying down, quite relaxed and chewing, were two roe deer. One was an adult, the other a youngster. Deer sometimes visit our front garden but I had never before seen them in the back part, owing to the thick, wide hedge that runs along the bottom, acting as a barrier to the fields and woods beyond. I had to rub my eyes to make sure that I was not dreaming.

Pulling on some clothes, I went downstairs to take a closer look, for the deer were only about five metres from the house. I wondered what would happen when I went out to fill the birdfeeders and fully expected them to move off, for roe deer are shy and suspicious creatures if you get too close.  I often come across them whilst out walking and they always bound off when approached.

My creeping along with a jug of peanuts, some fat balls and a bowl of birdseed did not scare off the deer. They showed absolutely no sign of being bothered, not even staring at me. It was as if we were part of the same family and I was no threat. It was then that I knew what was happening. Of course, the two deer were mother and daughter! It was no coincidence that they had arrived in my garden, seemingly from nowhere, on this Christmas Eve. It was a sign from my mother that she was with us, and understood our longing. Unable to physically return, she had sent messengers from the community of nature. It was a Christmas message with intense meaning, brought not by a commercial card, but by angels of the wild: ‘I am always with you. Unseen forces attach us and that link cannot be broken. Remember that we are all part of one family, whether we are human or non-human. Look, feel and listen and you will know it.’

What astounded me, and still does, is that wild animals were able to respond to a cosmic request to come as comforters. How did they hear this message from my mother, and know where to come and what they had to do? They did, though, and I could only marvel at the magic of it all.

Carefully, I placed some soft apples from the Christmas feast on the lawn and after I had stepped back the deer came to nibble at them, before lying down again in the shade of a variegated bush, the youngster tucking herself close to her mother.

My sister arrived with her husband and, surveying the scene, she simply said, ‘Mother is here.’ As it got dark I set the table, lit candles and we sat down to toast absent friends. Suddenly, illuminated by the light from the room, we noticed that the Christmas visitors had drawn closer. In hushed tones, we said, ‘Look, they’re here.’ Two faces peered in the floor-length window. Standing watching us, side by side, were the mother and daughter deer.

The atmosphere in the room was beautiful to say the least, with an overwhelming sense of different dimensions blending, as all life – past, present and future – became as one. After a few minutes of gazing in, the deer moved on into the night and we assumed that they had left for their life in the distant woods. An owl then hooted from the willow tree as we ate our meal and pulled crackers.  Next morning, Christmas Day, they were still there, lying under the same bush. Throwing open the curtains I had expected to miss them, for a feeling of deep connection had already formed between us. Their continued presence was a wonderful sight to wake up to, and the best present my sister and I could have that year. The pair wandered around, coming right past the windows as we breakfasted, and the energy that they brought lit the place up. Life was continuous and these wild creatures were the harbinger of that good news.

Our entertainment that day became watching the deer in the garden as they wandered around, before going back to lie in their favourite spot at the edge of the lawn. I can’t describe in mere words how special and memorable it made our days together that year.

The next morning, my sister stood by the window and said her goodbyes to the Christmas visitors. After she had driven off with her husband I went into the kitchen to clear up. It was then that I noticed that the deer had gone too.

Holding out my hands towards the field and the woods, I thanked the deer for spending time with us – a magical gift. I then sent out a prayer that they should be safe, for life as a wild animal is full of dangers from human predators. I have never seen them since, but their message lives on in my soul. They had even been happy about photos being taken, and every now and again I look at their images, blowing these special angels kisses, to reach them wherever they now may be.”