We are all joined in the holiness of the mind that God created. I therefore never consider myself alone in the silence. I'm 90 and live alone in a four room house surrounded by open space. I have no T and have always luxuriated in silence. The exterior silence is here. The i8nterior silence is a work in progress.
When we sit prayerfully in silence and solitude we are entering the desert, our desert. In this sacred space, the goal is not to hide from others, devoid of pain, or to hold ourselves apart from and above the community in which we live. It is to receive the grace to learn to face ourselves directly so we can learn to live ordinariness, to live ethically and generously with others.