On the surface, silence was simple: we didn't speak unless it was necessary. But what was 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.
We are familiar with the space in meditation and prayer where we sit in deep silence, attentive and awake, listening within the darkness. Yet we can also live in this state of deep receptivity, relying on what we hear inside our hearts in all aspects of our lives. This is what is needed of us now: to allow the divine to flow into the world and awaken us all within the oneness and joy of That which is at once both infinite within the silence of our own hearts, and visible in the sparkling moments of light and love that are creation.
