You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest, And I smile, and am silent, And even my soul remains quiet: It lives in the other world Which no one owns. The peach trees blossom. The water flows.
Faith is the experience of divine breath... No intellectual argument can awaken faith; what it can do at best is to eliminate obstacles, prejudices and misunderstandings, and thus help establish the state of interior silence necessary for the divine breath. But faith itself is the divine breath whose origin is found neither in logical reasoning, nor in human moral action. The divine and flaming Word shines in the world of the silence of the soul and "moves" it. This movement is living faith -- therefore real and authentic -- and its light is hope or illumination.
~ Anonymous in THE FIRE OF SILENCE AND STILLNESS ed. by Paul Harris