Hear Our Silence

When I worked closely with Penguins as a children’s bookseller, there was a category known as ‘difficult author’.

I suspect that most authors are ‘difficult’ to their publishers. It is, after all, a difficult business. More so now, as the money bags call the tune from the penthouse atop.

Here are my books, none of them difficult and all published by delightful men who know how to respect the diggers deep down at the coalface.

Hear our Silence

Unveiled, an intriguing book with brilliant shy nun blushing on front cover. Mary Loudon had got ‘nuns talking’, and the marketing hit the religious jackpot. HarperCollins badly wanted their riposte. My friend Shirley du Boulay (biographer of Teresa of Avila, Desmond Tutu, Bede Griffiths, Abhishiktananda) passed the slip catch in my direction.

Collins editor wanted men, monks: the girls had played their match.

I strode in telling my editor that the Carthusians were the only guys on the block. After all, they had been at it 900 years, ‘never reformed’. And there is only one Charterhouse in England: Parkminster.

So I telephoned. ‘I wonder if they will answer,’ mused my Jesuit friend who had kindly vouchsafed their sacred number.

I went and was admitted - for two weeks I lived the rhythmn of their life. Summoned by the midnight bell to Matins, psalms chanted between two choirs like an etherial tennis dual. Physical, but intensely spiritual.

Morning mass, mostly in dense silence, for this is their way. And so they taught me how to pray. To receive all that is on offer, deep within each one of us.

Hear our Silence a portrait of the Carthusians (151 pp. paperback) £10

That was a start, my first book. When from the Red House I had sold so many great stories to children. Help, now it was my turn to tell a tale or two…and here was I, plunged into the midst of these strange silent monks.

I had tried it before myself. With the Jesuits, thirteen years before the mast - never ordained. Just bucked out in time. Now I was into the deep end once more. And this was for real. These men whom I met in the depths of each night, plodding their way to their God, taught me so much.

About prayer, about attention to life, about relating. The Jays were never too hot on that…relating.

More books by John Skinner

A REVELATION OF LOVE Julian of Norwich, translation into modern English £8.00

SOUNDING THE SILENCE - an introduction to the Prayer of Silence £8.00

WISDOM OF THE CLOISTER - a selection of monastic writings across the centuries arranged as a daily reader  £12

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order by email : Wordman@HearourSilence.com

Hear our Silence, a portrait of the Carthusians, tells of Skinner’s sojourn with the English Carthusians at Parkminster: a vivid insight into the daily routine of prayer, silence and solitude of these most austere hermit monks.

Published by Gracewing (www.gracewing.co.uk)

Sounding the Silence flows from Skinner’s on-going relationship with the Carthusians. A series of readings - one per week throughout the year - is accompanied by his experienced comments on the prayer of silence. Classically illustrated with the wood gravings of Robert Gibbins.

UK Gracewing             USA  Liturgy Training Publications

A modern rendering of England’s greatest mystic, the writings of Julian of Norwich, the first woman to write in the English language is also published by Gracewing in the UK

In the USA, Doubleday distribute a handsomely produced edition:

www.doubleday.com

The same company also publish Wisdom of the Cloister 365 daily readings from the greatest monastic writers.

Confession of Saint Patrick is a little known work by the great patron saint of Ireland - his autobiography telling of his conversion, escape from and return to the Island of his first love. Flowing translation from the original Latin with foreword by John O’Donohue.

The Book of Margery Kempe is the remarkable autobiography of a contemporary of Julian of Norwich. In complete contrast to Julian who keeps her anchorite cell in Norwich, Marjory travels Europe on pilgrimage and finally on to the Holy Land.

But she also journeys to Norwich where she seeks advice from Julian.

Doubleday, New York