
Source: Saint Silouan the Athonite (1991), p. 79
Source: Comfort and Protest (1987), p. 71
Source: Saint Silouan the Athonite (1991), p. 79
“When God talks to humans he doesn’t want humans to hear his voice.”
Source: Soul Mountain (1989), ch. 81, p. 505
“Why are my hands this way
That they will not do as i say?
Does no God hear when I pray?”
"Here"
Tares (1961)
“If there must be a god in the house, let him be one
That will not hear us when we speak: a coolness”
"Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit"
Transport to Summer (1947)
Context: p> If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the room and on the stair,Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghostOr Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out
His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.He must be incapable of speaking, closed,
As those are: as light, for all its motion, is;As color, even the closest to us, is;
As shapes, though they portend us, are.It is the human that is the alien,
The human that has no cousin in the moon.It is the human that demands his speech
From beasts or from the incommunicable mass.If there must be a god in the house, let him be one
That will not hear us when we speak: a coolnessA vermillioned nothingness, any stick of the mass
Of which we are too distantly a part.</p
“Among the very names of God, we hear: the Compassionate, the All-Merciful.”
Address to the European Parliament (2015)
Context: I and countless other Muslims, have been taught from our earliest years that our religion demanded respect and caring for others. The Prophet Mohammad, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “None of you has faith until you love for your neighbour what you love for yourself.”
This is what it means to be a Muslim.
Among the very names of God, we hear: the Compassionate, the All-Merciful. All my life, every day, I have heard and used the greeting, Assalamu aleikum — a wish for the other to be blessed with peace.
This is what it means to be a Muslim.
More than a thousand years before the Geneva Conventions, Muslim soldiers were ordered not to kill a child, a woman or an old person, not to destroy a tree, not to harm a priest, not to destroy a church.
These are the same values of Islam we were taught in school as children: not to destroy or desecrate a place where God is worshipped, not a mosque, not a church, not a synagogue.
This is what it means to be a Muslim. These are the values I teach my children and they will hand on to theirs.
“I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 266.