the Forgotten Speech: Language, Self-Centeredness, and Silence of World

A child points at a bird and asks, "What's that?" The adult answers, "A sparrow." The child repeats the word and stops watching.In this small, everyday moment, the author locates the great tragedy of human language: we have learned to name, and in learning to name, we have forgotten to listen. The world speaks constantly-in the alarm calls of prairie dogs, the chemical warnings of trees, the slow grammar of rivers, the pulse of pulsars-but we have built a prison of human meaning, mistaking our own voice for the silence of the universe.Drawing on Sufi mysticism, Christian hesychasm, deep ecology, phenomenology, and the latest research in animal and plant communication, The Forgotten Speech argues that the prophets understood something we have lost: the languages of birds, winds, stones, and stars are not metaphors but realities. And they are available to anyone willing to practice the disciplines of attention, silence, and humility.Part philosophy, part spiritual guide, part manual for listening, this book invites you to set aside the self-centered filter of ordinary speech and hear the world as it has always been speaking. Not for you. But around you. And if you listen closely-through you.For readers of David Abram, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Mary Oliver, The Forgotten Speech is an unforgettable journey into the voices we have refused to hear-and the sense of the world that awaits on the other side of silence.

Pagina's: 119, Paperback, Independently published