True silence is a key to the immense and flaming heart of God. It is the beginning of a divine courtship that will end only in the immense, creative, fruitful, loving silence of final union with the Beloved... This silence, then, will break forth in a charity that overflows in the service of the neighbor without counting the cost. Availability will become delightsome and easy, for in each person the soul will see the face of love. Hospitality will e deep and real, for a silent heart is a loving heart, and a loving heart is a hospice to the world.
I was caught suddenly by a sweep of reverence, by a sensation that made me want to sink to my knees. For somehow I knew that I had stumbled upon an epiphany, a strange gracing of my darkness... That was the moment the knowledge descended into my heart and I understood. REALLY understood. Crisis, change, all the myriad upheavals that blister the spirit and leave us groping — they aren't voices simply of pain but also of creativity. And if we would only listen, we might hear such times as beckoning us to a season of waiting, to the place of fertile emptiness.