Ssshh ... its the sound of God

A few years ago I was fascinated by a radio 4 broadcast featuring Noirin Ni Riain, renowned Irish singer, talking about theosony, the sound of God. She spoke with passion of how we learn to be silent and listen with the ear of the heart.

I contacted her as she said that she'd just completed a PhD in Limerick on this theme and i was able to get a copy. It is a powerful piece of theological reflection but to my knowledge it has not been more widely published. So I was happy to discover that her autobiography has just been released by Veritas books in Ireland.

I have just finished it and apart from making me nostalgic for an Ireland I never really knew, it also many theological and spiritual insights that made me stop for a moment or two: including this one.

'No two silent listenings to the inner voice of God's self-disclosure are the same either. The God who reveals will be known not only in names but also silence. This silence does not reduce God to absence or mere emptiness, but is fullness, which is a Trinity of Persons. It is almost as if the Trinity is not composed of just three parts but of four: the fourth is the silence that reveals the triune God to the universe and wherein cosmic sound disappears into the silent mist. Human silence, which human ears can perceive, arises out of the silence that cannot be heard, yet which is drawn back to the world by an organic momentum. The Word is the fruit of the silent seed of Divine/human encounter. To taste the full fruit is to taste the revelation of God in and through the dialogical Trinity' (p78)