While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness
That I was blessed, and could bless.
~ by William Butler Yeats
It is not outer reality that silence reveals, but our own innerness. Silence is essentially a surrender to the holiness of the divine mystery – whether we use these words or not. An atheist, calming his or her spirit in the peace of silence, is irradiated by the same mystery, anonymous but transforming. We are to listen. To what? To silence.