Our society has forgotten that all of life can be a work of art, even the most mundane-seeming tasks... There is great beauty in cleanliness and order and bringing it into being. Watering the plants is as necessary as cleaning the stove, and vice versa. All these tasks bespeak care for oneself and others, and appreciation of the opportunity to create a temenos -- a sanctuary, a safe and sacred place.
Silence is primarily a quality of the heart that leads to ever-growing charity. It is portable cell that we carry with us wherever we go. From it we speak to those in need and to it we return after our words have born fruit. And, it is in this portable cell that we find ourselves immersed in the divine silence. The final question in a ministry of silence is not whether we say much or little, but whether our words call forth the caring silence of God, the silence to which we are all called.