One of my mother's most amazing characteristics is the way she has always valued and created beauty, even at a time in her life when such valuing seemed to threaten survival. In this, I know my mother to be the image of God. Not only has God created all things beautiful from nothing; this is no more than we would expect. In those country barns, my mother recognized broken pieces of furniture for what they were and she paid for their re-creation by going hungry. In the same way, God as our mother recognizes the beauty within all the broken and discarded parts of ourselves ...
There has to be enough communication so that silence can be a grace. That kind of silence demands a deeper love, and until that much love is developed, there is no point in pretending that the love is there when it isn't. The justification of silence in our life is that we love one another to be silent together ... In the depths of community life, we realize the grace of being silent together, but we don't arrive at this by excluding others or treating them as objects. It happens gradually as we learn to love ... The need is for a true silence which is alive and which carries a loving presence.