We say silence is golden. Golden as in exquisite, valuable, rare. In the spiritual life, silence is even more: the doorway to the presence of God. But in today's noisy world, where is the holy quiet of silence to be found? Can you hear the silence in your life?
To withdraw gracefully from the public stage and by securing a season of virtuous repose after a life of action – to place a kind of sacred interval between this world and the next, is a piece of practical wisdom which I fear is in few hands.