NURTURING SILENCE IN A NOISY HEART

by Wayne E. Oates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 20, 1979

Practical advice from a Christian psychologist on how to carve out a niche of quiet sanity in the crazy rush of everyday life. Oates himself is an admitted workaholic, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Knoxville and the author of 25 books, and much of this chatty, agreeable manual bears the stamp of personal experience. Oates lists several tell-tale signs of spiritual stress--fatigue, loss of perspective, poor judgment, and mental confusion--and suggests a number of strategies for finding the privacy needed to relieve it. He recommends creating ""pockets of silence"" by cutting down on TV, unplugging the telephone, rescheduling work, and generally slipping out from under the sensory overload of routine existence. This sort of ""centering"" silence also enables us to hear the sounds of a more ominous silence--the distress signals emitted by lonely, despairing people all around us, and the echoes of our own moribund ideals. And silence, finally, is the essential condition for heating the voice of God. Oates' approach is strictly non-sectarian and low-key: he spends far more time on mental hygiene than on religion. A simple, sensible, how-to guide to serenity (assuming you can really find serenity through a book).

Pub Date: July 20, 1979

ISBN: 0806620374

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION