Keeping God's Silence.

Keeping God's Silence

Rachel Muers

Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 246pp.

In Keeping God's Silence, Rachel Muers probes the issue of communication and silence and their implications for the moral life. A lecturer at the University of Exeter and herself a practicing Quaker, Muers posits silence as a path to more ethical modes of communication, both among individuals, and between individuals and God. She challenges us to consider silence as something more than the absence of speech or a gap in conversation; it is, she argues, a powerful means of communication in its own right. Drawing heavily upon the work of Nelle Morton and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the book opens with an examination of what Muers appealingly terms the "garrulous silencing of God," whereby the universe of language we employ to define God, from the colloquial to the liturgical, paradoxically confines or "silences" God. She encourages us to cease using words to silence others in this way, opting instead for an attentive or expressive silence through which we become open to others, inquiring of ourselves who hears and who is heard. Though she uses both Christological and feminist viewpoints to frame her arguments, her message is universal, clearly articulated, and conveyed in accessible prose.