A tourist spending the night in a small New England Town joined a group sitting on the porch of the general store.  After several vain attempts to start a conversation asked, "Is there a law against talking in this town."

"No law against it," said one old timer. We just like to make sure it's an improvement on silence."

It is a paradox that we encounter so much internal noise when we first try to sit in silence.

Silence open the inner fount from which the word arises.

The world without tears is a heartless world. The soul that sheds no tears is a soul without love. O God, save us from turning into statues of tearlessness! This must be our prayer. Tears are signs of life; they bring life back to the world. Tears well out of the heart of love; they restore to the human community the ability to love. Tears take form in cries and struggles for justice; they revive the soul of our century for a promise and a future. And it is in the people capable of tears that a promise of human community and a future for the world lie.

To keep our feet on the ground is to find wholeness in our lives. We bring spirit down in the world of soul to be embodied, to work, to be of benefit. At the same times we go the other way, too, bringing world up toward spirit, ennobling the kitchen and the freeway. Integrity is active, a practice concerned with motion, connection, and struggle. It does not just go by the rules. In the great silence, integrity listens for the true course. This means that integrity is slow. It allows us to feel the anxiety of events developing, finding their shape; it does not rush through the time of growth, and enjoys the moment before the task is complete.

Consciousness individually and collectively shapes our material world. Our interior life constantly shapes our exterior life. This is why no matter how diverse our work in the external world, the "common work" of humanity —the only true way we can live our external lives — requires becoming conscious of the relationship between our inner and outer lives.

"The book is done then. I guess we're finished."

"No, son, we're not finished. We just don't need us a book anymore. You can just come and visit anyway. I might go to see your family too. I hear there's a good fishing your way. We did this book just like we said we would. We did our best. I don't care if nothing else happens with it or if somebody was to print a hundred copies. I'll have my own copy and I can read now."

"You've accomplished a lot."

"That's right. Yet judge me not for the deeds I've done. But for the life I've lived. Son, people think one hundred years is a long time. Most folks just don't understand. My life hasn't been as long at all; seems short to me. It's all gone by so fast. Life is so good and it gets better every day."

Much of our work is invisible and intangible. You cannot measure it by human means; and sometimes a period of silent reflection will accomplish more good than if the time had been spent in outward activity. Our work is immaterial where we are and what we do; the thing that matters is who we are and what we intend. Constant preoccupation with exterior work handicaps our knowledge of ourselves and of our intentions.

Whatever we do for the love of God benefits our souls and our lives in a way that ego-motivated actions never can. Whatever we do for the love of God is done with sincerity because it is not motivated by self-interest. We leave our concern for gain and loss, success and failure, in the hands of God. We stop considering ourselves as the sole cause of our actions and their results. Consequently, we become the instruments of a deep wisdom and love.

Work is more than work. Work is a way of creating and contributing; It is giving to the world; it is sacramental, because It is serving. It is a yielding up and a showing, WHATEVER it is you did — The best-made bed, the best-written book, the best piece of pottery you had within you. It is good for the psyche and good for the soul.