An inner city priest went to the home of a poor old lady in the parish. She was dying. When the priest came to her side, she said, "Don't talk and don't run." She seemed to want to die fully appreciative of her life in God, which was too deep for any consoling words at that point. And she wanted to die appreciative of the human community that incarnates God's presence on this plane of existence, which was too deep for words but not for silent, prayerful human presence. That is contemplative dying.
...We can approach all of the myriad little ego deaths, all the ways we don't get what we want (as opposed to what we need) in our lives, in the same way as that woman faced physical death... We need to leave room for the silence that can free the wonder, as well as for words.
Silence as a spiritual practice is much more than being able to sit still without talking for thirty minutes or longer. Instead, silence is a quality of presence. The silence we search for is an overall state of being. It is not something we achieve with great effort, either, but something we uncover that is inside us. Somewhere at our core there is a reservoir of silence. . . . To return regularly to this depth, whether in cloistered silence or in line at the grocery, is called "a habit of silence." It is not duration that is important, but the returning time after time to the source within us that, in time, shapes who we are.