There are times not to answer the door, not to answer the phone, not to do undone things, but to rest in silence from everything. The world can wait five minutes. In fact no matter how busy we are, no matter how well organized, no matter how little rest we allow ourselves, we will never do all that needs to be done. But to do well what we are called to do, it is essential to nurture a capacity for inner stillness. Such quiet, deep-down listening is itself prayer.
The solitary life, being silent, clears away the smoke-screen of words that we lay down between our mind and things... Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being, between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world of silence, words to not separate us from the world nor from others, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.
~ from THOUGHTS IN SOLITUDE by Thomas Merton