When I first began to enter the Silence, it felt like an alien atmosphere filled with menacing voices, capricious thoughts, uncomfortable feelings. But as the days and weeks passed, the Silence became a welcoming friend, a presence like the warmth of a fire in which I encountered the Divine Lover of my soul and experienced my Self as God's Beloved.
We are striving for humility in our lives, to draw closer to God . . . It is not an accident that the humus, or the soil, comes from the same word. It's the base from which everything grows. Gardening and the spiritual life go together.