But what is the point of silence? The point was, we learned, not mere silence, not silence to preserve some sort of order, but something much greater. In silence the idea was to recollect ourselves, to place ourselves more squarely in the presence of God than we would if people were talking to us all the time. We could pray, we could meditate, we could contemplate. . . . Silence was broken, of course, by people doing things they could not control -- coughing, sneezing, short periods of recreation, the sounds of work being done . . . But all of this merely emphasized the silence rather than disturbing it. Sounds could never absorb this silence; nothing could order it around. It concentrated itself, and from it all else flowed. Silence could never be silenced.
~ from THE TULIP AND THE POPE: A NUN’S STORY by Deborah Larsen
Is it possible to see the future as dark and darkening further; to reject false hope and
desperate pseudo-optimism without collapsing into despair?...if you don't feel despair, in
times like these, you are not fully alive. But there has to be something beyond despair,
too; or rather, something that accompanies it, like a companion on the road....I am
going to pick up [my scythe] and go and find some grass to mow. I am going to cut
great swaths of it...I am going to walk ahead, following the ground... I am going to
breathe the still-clean air and listen to the still-singing birds and reflect on the fact that
the earth is older and harder than the machine that is eating it—that it is indeed more
resilient than fragile—and that change comes quickly when it comes, and that
knowledge is not the same as wisdom.
