The power of silence lies in its emptiness. Silence is a receptive space. It creates a sacred void, an opening through which you can receive: truth, perspective, strength, healing, revelation. In silence, you transcend words and contact the wordless. You fill up with a peaceful knowing. Silence is not the same as prayer. Prayer is a way of directing your feelings and thoughts, focusing them and sending them toward a source. Silence is listening, receiving, being. One is trying to reach the source of communication with it; the other, silence, is allowing yourself to hear the source within yourself, to become one with it... In prayer, you are the sender; in silence, you are the receiver.
Alone with God, we feel no need to perform, to do. The pressure is off. That good, refreshing feeling is nothing less than an experience of God's accepting love. It is the healing power of an eternal passion that is consummated in the reunion of creature and Creator. God is delighted by our act of will in which we love and place ourselves in the Presence. That divine delight is the lover who draws each of us back and forth between twin poles, the loving opportunities of solitude and solidarity.