Silent Voice Quotes illustrated with Andrea's drawings
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This document discusses several examples of "silent voices" throughout history, including Andreas who struggles to communicate through her drawings, isolated elders, and oppressed groups who are not heard. It provides quotes and teachings from various religious and spiritual figures who raised their voices for justice, equality, and spiritual truths, including Baha'u'llah, the Apostles James and John, Psalms, Sufi stories, Emily Dickinson, and Rita Joe.
Silent Voice Quotes illustrated with Andrea's drawings
- 1. SILENT VOICES • “God grant that all men may turn unto the treasuries latent within their own beings...The source of crafts, sciences and arts is the power of reflection. Make ye every effort that out of this ideal mine there may gleam forth such pearls of wisdom and utterance as will promote the well-being and harmony of all the kindreds of the earth.” - Baha’u’llah from Gleanings
- 2. SILENT VOICES: • A voice by definition is not silent. But a voice that is not heard is like a mighty tree that crashes to the ground in an uninhabited forest - no one hears it! • There are a lot of silent voices in the world: little children whose parents are too busy to listen, the average man in a country that is ruled by despots, husbands and wives who don’t know how to share and acknowledge individual considerations and needs. • Solitary confinement is one of the most feared punishments in a penal system. Physical torture, food deprivation and emotional abuse are not as effective tools to manipulate as removing a person from all human contact. Without being able to communicate ideas, desires or wishes a person goes through mental and spiritual anguish. • Andreas handicap of not being able to speak her ideas or express her wishes has locked her in a prison of solitary confinement. The grand parents who are isolated and remote from their families and who don’t have the daily interchange of thoughts with people who care, describe their heartache when they don’t hear from us. What about Andrea? What about her heartaches, as she has struggled for 34 years to be understood and having her wants heard and acknowledged. • That is what is so wonderful about the satisfaction that she seems to derive from her drawings. They seem to be a medium of expression for her. • They also can be a tool for the rest of us to learn to stop and listen - not only to her but to each other. • We are surrounded by silent voices. We just need to learn to pause and listen!
- 4. The Path: • We live in spiritual harmony • Wisdom gained from the minds of the old • Revived in trails left for the young. • The path is still in existence • We practice it with respect • -Rita Joe...1991 Andrea’s vision
- 5. • SPIRITUAL REALITY: • He it is who perceived a unique, a tempered, and a pervasive nature in things, bearing the closest likness to the human spirit, and he discovered this nature to be distinct from the substance of things in their refined form. He hath a special pronouncement on this weighty theme. (Tablets of Baha’u’llah 146). • FAITH: • What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. (James 2:14-17).
- 6. SIGNS: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me, not becouse you saw signs, but becouse you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal.” (John 6:26- 27). WORK: AND LET THE BEAUTY OF THE LORD OUR GOD be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. -Psalms 90:17.
- 7. “Within every blade of grass are enshrined the mysteries of an inscrutable wisdom, and upon every rosebush a myriad nightingales pour out, in blissful rapture, their melody” Baha’u’llah, Kitab-i-Iquan, 198.
- 8. Past the seeker as he prayed, came the crippled and the begger and the beaten. And seeing them, the holy one went down into deep prayer and cried, “Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?” And out ot the long silence, God said, “I did do something. I made you.” -Sufi teaching story
- 9. If when an earthquake voice of power, And signs in earth and heaven are showing That, forth, in its appointed hour, The Spirit of the Lord is going! And, with that Spirit, Freedom’s light On kindred, tongue, and people breaking, Whose slumbering millions, at the sight, In glory and in strength are waking! Poems-Whittier,” Pastoral Letter, pp 188-9.
- 10. THE OTHER VOICES: Emily Dickinson : According to the World Book Encyclopedia, she wrote her poems in seclusion. Her most important poems concern the relationship between the inner self and the external world. Of the 1,700 plus poems that she wrote, only seven were published during her lifetime- and those without her consent. She was definitely a silent voice until the first volume of her poetry was published - four years after her death. John Greenleaf Whittier : Was born in Haverhill, Mass. His parents were Quaker farmers. He is often called the “Quaker poet”. He raised is voice against slavery and was active in the abolitionist movement. Rita Joe : Lives on the Eskasoni Reserve on Cape Breton Island. After raising a family and struggling in poverty and deprivation on the reserve, her poetry became her voice. The Apostle James: One of the twelve apostles who Christ chose from the working class of common men to assist him with his ministry. He was the head of the Christian Church in Jerusalem during the first years after it was founded. He died a martyr, killed by a mob in Jerusalem in AD 62. The Epistle of James warns Christians that the profession of faith cannot take the place of good deeds. The Apostle John : A brother of James was also a fishermen from the sea of Galilee. He was a close companion of Jesus.
- 11. THE OTHER VOICES: Psalms: There are approximately 150 Hebrew religious poems in the Old Testament. For the most part, the authors are anonymous - truly “silent voices”. Sufi Teaching Stories: Mostly anonymous authors contributed to early Islamic teaching stories. These stories are based on Mohammed’s teachings and are the result of studying the messages in the Koran. Baha’u’llah (Mirza Husayn’Ali): Imprisoned in Persia in 1853, exiled to Baghdad, and banished with his family and some of his followers by the Turkish Sultan to the prison city of Acre for 24 years. During this time Baha’u’llah produced over 100 volumes of writings. The central theme of these writings is that humanity is one single race and that the day has come for its unification into one global society. According to these teachings, the principal challenge facing the peoples of the earth is to accept this fact and assist in the processes of unification. Followers of his teachings are called Baha’i’s.