What sets monks apart from the rest of us is not an overbearing piety by a contemplative sense of fun. They know, as Trappist monk Matthew Kelty reminds us, that "you do not have to be holy to love God. You have only to be human. Nor do you have to be holy to see God in all things. You have only to play as a child with an unselfish heart."
What a strange power there is in silence. How many resolutions are formed, how many sublime conquests effected, during that pause when lips are closed and the soul secretly feels the eye of her Maker upon her.