“Soul of Nonviolence” is a podcast that reflects on a different nonviolence quote each week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or via RSS.
“I do feel that God is with the movement of noncooperation. I have no special revelation of God’s will. My firm belief is that God reveals himself daily to every human being, but we shut our ears to that ‘still small voice.’ We shut our eyes to the ‘pillar of fire’ in front of us.”
— Mohandas Gandhi
This week, we expand on the discussion of being faithful to the truth with a quote from Gandhi. His description of the “still small voice” and “the pillar of fire” as ways God reveals himself is, in another sense, the way that the truth is revealed to us.
One way of framing this quote is by seeing it as putting into words how we are in communion with the divine all the time, and how for various reasons we sometimes ignore that communication. In stillness and silence — and noncooperation with our own tendencies to close our eyes and ears — we can learn again to foster that connection and find our way to a more nuanced understanding of truth and love.