RECLAIMING QUIET:
Cultivating a Life of Holy Attention
By Sarah Clarkson
Baker Books. 192 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978 1 540 900 524
Spoiler Alert: If you’re an alpha-male pastor, you will hate this book! In an intoxicating blend of touching life story, lyrical writing style and a deep yearning for God, vicar’s wife and mother of four, Sarah Clarkson challenges the corrosive demands of our restless and distracted world.
Quiet, she argues, is not simply the absence of noise; it’s the cultivated practice of creating space for reflection, self-awareness and divine connection. For many of us, life doesn’t allow for anything like that. It’s dominated by minute-by-minute news updates… anxious headlines… and mindless social-media scrolling. Never mind the actual demands of real life and ministry. And anyway, if we’re honest, we often feel deeply uneasy about the whole concept of quiet. What do we feel like when it’s quiet?
But what if we allowed ourselves the luxury of stepping outside our manic schedules and into companionship with our Creator? Clarkson describes it as ‘coming home’. She challenges the popular notion that we can be anything we want. ‘Our very embodiment reveals the contours of our severely boundaried nature’. And yet, ‘we are limited beings to whom unlimited grace is given’. She argues that quiet is not for the ultra-disciplined, or limited to those who have bags of time; it’s our inner native land, the place where we find God already waiting, calling us beloved, and drawing us into a life of holy and joyous attention.
Although this is not designed to be a ‘how to’ book, it shows us ways to care for our inner lives; listen to the voice of God in the everyday; lament the brokenness of our fallen world; and stay grounded in the ‘now’ while looking with hope and expectation to the ‘not yet’.
Read the book and try it. Initially, it may expose feelings of discomfort but, ultimately, it may lead you to spiritual renewal and a closer walk with God. And if you are an alpha-male pastor? Maybe someone will write a book especially for you, called ‘Claiming Quiet’!
