For, to love another is to address to that person the most powerful and imperious form of appeal. It is to stir up in his or her depths a silent and hidden person forced to emerge in response to our voice, so new that even its owner did not know it, yet so true that he or she cannot fail to recognize it, even though seeing it for the first time.
The power of silence should not be underestimated. Nor should the power of words. Language shapes silence; it give silence rhythm, pitch and texture. When words become embodied in beings, they become the ornaments and reminders of silence. Silence is the ground. Language and words bring "things" into "being" out of the emptiness. What carries the Word is breath. Words are Spirit transmuted into substance... Without holy speech, the boundaries of the world shrink, and humans are left in a wasteland outside the web of great nature. Without silence, we cannot hear the voices of all beings.