winter, stillness

I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.
I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.

Silence is one of the great
and eloquent arts of conversation.

True silence is our search for God ... a suspension bridge that a soul in love with God builds across the dark, frightening gullies of its own mind, the strange chasms of temptations, the depthless precipices of its own fears that impede its way to God.

True silence is the speech of lovers. For only love knows its beauty, completeness, and utter joy. True silence is a garden enclosed, where alone the soul can meet its God.

Silence is the folding of the wings of the intellect to open the door of the heart.

We are all joined in the holiness of the mind that God created. I therefore never consider myself one in the silence. I'm 88 and live alone in a four room house surrounded by open space. I have no TV and have always luxuriated in silence. The exterior silence is here. The interior silence is a work in progress.

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your Name.
 

Sitting in silence
Circle of arms linked as One
The way towards Peace.

Silence makes us pilgrims. It guards the fire within. It teaches us how to speak.

We need to "find" God, who cannot be found in noise and restlessness.  God is a friend of silence. The more we engage in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life. The essential thing is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us.

Before we determine what God wants to hear from us, we need to think about keeping still in order to hear from God. Our culture is drowning in noise. Such a culture cries out for a ministry of silence. It needs to re-learn that silence is an indispensible discipline of the spiritual life . . . to discover the voice of Love speaks most powerfully in the still small voice of silence.