Forgiveness means "to give up resentment against". When we give up our resentment against another person, we are consciously choosing to not allow that person to exercise the power to make us angry. Forgiveness acknowledges that we are ultimately responsible for the world we create and how we feel about it... Through forgiveness we encounter the frail essence of the other ... this creates fertile ground where miracles occur, where avowed enemies join hands as friends.
Silence as a spiritual practice is much more than being able to sit still without talking for thirty minutes or longer. Instead, silence is a quality of presence. The silence we search for is an overall state of being. It is not something we achieve with great effort, either, but something we uncover that is inside us. Somewhere at our core there is a reservoir of silence. . . . To return regularly to this depth, whether in cloistered silence or in line at the grocery, is called "a habit of silence." It is not duration that is important, but the returning time after time to the source within us that, in time, shapes who we are.