An exploration

and an experience
Sacred Silence in Literature and the Arts Conference 2019
Friday 4 – Saturday 5 October 2019
Gleeson Auditorium, Australian Catholic University,
25A Barker Road, Strathfield, NSW 2135
This conference is a coming together of artists, writers, musicians, academics and practitioners of the sacred
from different faith and no-faith traditions.

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Welcome to the tenth Sacred Silence in Literature and the Arts (SLA)
Conference
2019 presenters and presentations

Laurence Freeman OSB

Father Freeman was a keynote speaker at the 2017 SLA Conference, Awakening the Sacred. He is a
Benedictine monk of the Congregation of Monte Oliveto and also Director of the World Community for
Christian Meditation and of its Benedictine Oblate community.
Father Freeman is the author of many books, including Light Within, Selfless Self, Your Daily Practice,
The Inner Pilgrimage, Jesus: The Teacher Within and First Sight: The Experience of Faith.
Strongly committed to inter-religious dialogue and global peace initiatives, he has co-led with the Dalai
Lama at regular events in the historic Way of Peace program. He has been made an Officer of the Order
of Canada for his work for peace. He is also Director of the newly opened Bonnevaux Centre for Peace
near Poitiers in France, where he resides and participates in a broad programme of meditation retreats
and dialogue supporting peace-building and mutual understanding. Father Freeman is also a graduate
in English Literature from Oxford University with a deep interest in the sacred dimension of literature
and art.
Presentation: Silence in the Russian/American artist Mark Rothko (1903–1970). Father Freeman will
also lead the conference community in silent meditation.

Associate Professor Mehmet Ozalp

Ozalp is a prominent Muslim community leader in Australia. He is a scholar, public intellectual and
community leader. He is an Associate Professor of Islamic studies and the Director of the Centre for
Islamic Studies and Civilisation (CISAC) which he founded at Charles Sturt University (CSU). He is
also the founder and Executive Director of (Islamic Sciences and Research Academy of Australia)
ISRA. Under his leadership, CISAC and ISRA pioneered Islamic Studies courses at undergraduate and
postgraduate level since 2011.
Ozalp is the editor-in-chief of the Australian Journal of Islamic Studies. He serves on the executive
committee of the strategic research centre Public and Contextual Theology (PaCT) linked to CSU. He
serves on the Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Sydney. Ozalp has been serving
as the Muslim Chaplain at the University of Sydney and the Macquarie University since 2006. Ozalp’s
publications include these three books: 101 Questions You Asked About Islam, Islam in the Modern World
and Islam between Tradition and Modernity: An Australian Perspective.
Presentation: In Dialogue with Laurence Freeman on Silence and Wellbeing.

Rachael Kohn
Kohn is a former ABC radio broadcaster responsible for the program, The Spirit of Things. She was
awarded a Doctor of Letters from the University of New South Wales in 2005 for services to community
fostering religious understanding through her broadcasts, public speaking and book entitled The
New Believers: Re-imagining God. She has won three world gold medals from the New York Festivals
International Radio Competition.
Presentation: Kohn will open the conference with reflections on ‘Silence’ in the context of her own
Jewish faith tradition.

Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA

Emeritus Professor of Art History, Grishin works internationally as an art historian, art critic and
curator. He studied at universities in Melbourne, Moscow, London and Oxford and has served as visiting
scholar at Harvard University. In 2014 his Australian Art: A History was published by Melbourne
University Publishing.
Presentation: Spirituality and the Russian avant-garde. Professor Grishin examines the links between
the early 20th century Russian avant-garde artists and the Russian spiritual tradition inherent in
medieval icons.

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Professor Carole M. Cusack
Cusack, a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney, trained as a medievalist. She has
a doctorate published as Conversion Among the Germanic Peoples (Cassell 1998) and now researches
contemporary religious trends. Her books include Anime with Katharine Buljan, Religion and
Spirituality: Profane and Sacred Worlds in Contemporary Japan (Equinox 2015) and The Sacred Tree:
Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2011).
Presentation: The Multiple Silences of Julian of Norwich (c. 1342–c.1416). This lecture explores the
paradoxical silences in the life and work of Julian of Norwich. Julian’s visions focused on ideas of sin,
salvation and punishment, and gained popularity due to the optimistic words attributed to Christ: “All
shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Dr Susan Murphy
Murphy is a Zen Roshi and runs regular seven-day Zen retreats. She is the founding teacher of Zen Open
Circle and the author of three volumes on Zen: Upside-Down Zen; Minding the Earth, Mending the
World; Red Thread Zen. She is also a prize-winning film writer-director and a regular freelance producer
of feature documentaries for ABC Radio National.
Presentation: Seven forms of silence in Zen awakening. The famous 8th century Song of Freedom
(‘Zhengdaoge’ in Chinese,Shodoka in Japanese) attributed to Yongjia Xuanjue tells us that “It speaks in
silence; In speech, you hear its silence”. ‘It’ is unnamed here the way that God is left unnamed, being too
limitless for words to contain. Nothing is left out of it, and this fullness of reality has no outside.

Riley Lee
Lee began studying the shakuhachi in 1971 in Japan and became the first non-Japanese officially
acknowledged as a shakuhachi Dai Shihan (Grand Master). He has a PhD in musicology from Sydney
University and has released over 60 albums, with over 150,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.
In 2018, he designed and taught a course on meditation, the mind, memory and music at Princeton
University. Each year Riley gives performances, workshops, and lectures in Australia, USA and Europe.
Visit: www.rileylee.net
Presentation: Sound in silence. When playing the so-called “original pieces” (honkyoku) for the
shakuhachi, much importance is placed on what many would call the silence between the music. Lee will
attempt to share his understanding of the “silence” in shakuhachi honkyoku.

Father Michael Whelan

Father Michael is director of the Aquinas Academy adult education centre and parish priest of St
Patrick’s, Church Hill in Sydney.
Presentation: Silence speaks truthfully. Hans Kung, in his little book on Mozart (Mozart: Traces of
Transcendence), quotes the German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist, Theodor Adorno, “When
I hear great music, I believe that I know that what this music says cannot be untrue.” Silence may be
understood as an event. This is hugely paradoxical as silence seems more like absence than presence.
Silence is absence in service of presence. Silence speaks – it cannot be untrue.

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 Judith Beveridge
Beveridge has won prizes including the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal and the Christopher Brennan
Award for lifetime achievement in literature. She published seven collections of poetry, most recently Sun
Music: New and Selected Poems.
Presentation: Poetry and sacred silence. Beveridge will explore how poetry, because of its unique uses
of language, can be used as a tool to approach the divine. She will explore the specific devices of imagery,
rhythm and sound and show how these become interwoven into a highly concentrated expression which
reverberates into and animates our consciousness. Poetic concentration is a pathway into truth, it
uncovers connection and interrelationships which enhance our experience of the world. She will explore
how poetry awakens us to the many possibilities of being.

Leonard Brown
Brown is an Australian artist who works on both canonical icons and contemporary painting.
There is a concurrent exhibition of his work during the conference.
Presentation:“That there is a God is clear; but what He is by essence and nature, this is altogether
beyond our comprehension and knowledge” – St John of Damascus.
My dual activities, of canonical icon and contemporary painting, are both moderated within a milieu of
an Apophatic Theology, approaching the Divine, by negation, navigating in terms of what may not be said
about the perfect goodness that is God.

Debra Phillips
Phillips is a PhD candidate at ACU. Her interdisciplinary PhD by creative project examines the
interconnections between narrative, imagination, future, spirituality, and the visual arts in relationship
to suicidality. Phillips’ academic writing and presentations refer to textual and visual narratives of the
imagined future.
Presentation: Silence as the ‘sacre coèur’ of art-making.

Dr Jennifer Carpenter
Dr Carpenter is Deputy Head of School of Arts at ACU.
Presentation: Negotiating silence and silences in the 13th century: The power and meaning of silence in
hagiographical texts from the Low Countries. Dr Carpenter focuses on a unique corpus of 13th century
texts from the Low Countries that record the lives of local, contemporary, holy women (mostly) and
men, including laywomen, recluses, monks and nuns, early beguines and hospital sisters. The paper
will consider the power and meaning of silence in these texts – silence practised in relation to monastic
tradition, silence and speech in relation to the assertion of mystical authority, and the silences of texts
written to shape and advocate for new and sometimes unsettling religious experience.

Dr Michael Griffith
Griffith is an Associate Professor of Literature at ACU. He is founder of the Religion, Literature and the
Arts Movement in Sydney in the 1990s and author of God’s Fool: The Life and Poetry of Francis Webb,
winner of a Human Rights Award in 1991.
Presentation: Silence and the Australian spiritual imagination. I have had a long standing interest
in the way that poets, novelists and Australian artists explore the theme and experience of silence as a
touch-stone for their deepest search. “Words reach into the silence,” T.S. Eliot.

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Uncle Max Dulumunmun, Indigenous Yuin Elder
Presentation: Sacred Silence in the Indigenous Experience.

Juno Gemes
Prize Winning Australian Photographer
Presentation: Digital Exhibition of her photographs on the theme of Silence in the Australian Context.

Robert Adamson
Prize Winning Australian Poet
Presentation: His poems from the local Sydney Hawkesbury landscape, focussing on the theme of
silence.

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Friday, 4 October
Tea and coffee available from 8am
TIME SESSION PRESENTER

8.30 – 9.30 am Pre-conference discussion: Silence and wellbeing Father Laurence and
Professor Mehmet Ozalp

9.30 – 9.40am Welcome to ACU and housekeeping Michael Griffith

9.40 – 10am Welcome to Country: Indigenous Yuin Elder on Sacred Silence Uncle Max Dulumunmun

10 – 10.20am Morning meditation Fr Laurence Freeman

10.20 – 11am Reflections on silence Rachael Kohn

11 – 11.30am Morning tea

11.30am – 12.20pm It speaks in silence; in speech, you hear its silence Dr Susan Murphy

12.20 – 12.50pm Negotiating silence and silences in the 13th century Jennifer Carpenter

12.50 – 1.10pm Introduction to digital exhibition on silence Juno Gemes

1.10 – 2.10 pm Lunch in the art gallery and surrounds

2.10 – 3pm “That there is a God is clear; but what He is by essence and nature, Leonard Brown
this is altogether beyond our comprehension and knowledge”
– St John of Damascus
An Introduction to the exhibition of Leonard Brown’s art in the
McGlade Gallery

3 – 3.50pm Silence speaks truthfully Fr Michael Whelan

3.50 – 4.20pm Poetry of silence: The Hawksbury Robert Adamson

4.20 – 4.45pm Afternoon meditation Fr Laurence Freeman

4.45 – 5.30pm Light supper

5.30 – 6.30pm Spirituality and the Russian avant-garde Sasha Grishin

6.30 – 7pm Avo Paart/Hildegard von Bingen Gregorian Choir of Arcadia

7pm Close

Throughout the day you can visit Juno Geme’s digital photographic exhibition on Sacred Silence in the computer laboratory
adjacent to the Atrium.

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Saturday, 5 October
TIME SESSION PRESENTER

9 – 9.30am Morning meditation Fr Laurence Freeman

9.30 – 10.20am The multiple silences of Julian of Norwich Carole M. Cusack

10.20 – 11.10am Poetry and sacred silence Judith Beveridge

11.10 – 11.40am Morning tea

11.40am – 12.45pm Mark Rothko Fr Laurence Freeman

12.45 – 2.15pm Lunch and gallery viewing

2.15 – 3.15pm Sound in silence Riley Lee

3.15 – 3.45pm Silence as the ‘sacre coèur’ of art-making Debra Phillips

3.45 – 4.10pm Afternoon meditation Fr Laurence Freeman

4.10 – 4.50pm Light supper

4.50 – 5.30pm Silence and the Australian spiritual imagination Michael Griffith

5.30 – 6.30pm Concluding plenary session (questions and answers) Keynote speakers

6.30pm Conference Close

Throughout the day you can visit Juno Geme’s digital photographic exhibition on Sacred Silence in the computer laboratory
adjacent to the Atrium.
 acu.edu.au

AN EXPLORATION
AND AN EXPERIENCE

Sacred Silence in Literature and the Arts

Conference 2019
Friday 4 – Saturday 5 October 2019
Gleeson Auditorium,
Australian Catholic University,
25A Barker Road, Strathfield, NSW 2135
CRICOS registered provider: 00004G

Front image: Artwork by Leonard Brown

Disclaimer (September 2019): Information correct at time of printing. The University

reserves the right to amend, cancel or otherwise modify the content without notice.