And the light shone in the darkness and
Against the world the unstilled world still whirled
Above the center of the silent WORD.
~ T.S. Eliot with thanks to S. Charlene Schafer
Silence has many dimensions. It can be a regression and an escape, a loss of self, or it can be presence, awareness, unification, self-discovery. Negative silence blurs and confuses our identity, and we lapse into daydreams or diffuse anxieties. Positive silence pulls us together and makes us realize who we are, who we might be, and the distance between the two. Hence, positive silence implies a choice, and what Paul Tillich called the "courage to be."