Before we determine what God wants to hear from us, we need to think about keeping still in order to hear from God. Our culture is drowning in noise. Such a culture cries out for a ministry of silence. It needs to re-learn that silence is an indispensible discipline of the spiritual life . . . to discover the voice of Love speaks most powerfully in the still small voice of silence.
Monks call us tothe simplicity of willing one thing: in a culture intent on a high standard of living, they insist on a high standard of life.Achievement versus grace: the exposure of the emptiness of fullness for the fullness of emptiness. The heart of this subversion is in planting within a person the appetite for silence. And once planted, once one tastes silence, and listening, and stopping, and being flooded by a Depth beyond all words ... once you do nothing, say nothing, think nothing, but just let yourself BE ... if you ever let this happen, it's all over for you. From then on, everything else seems insane.
~ from A SEASON IN THE DESERT by W. Paul Jones, thanks to H. A. Hull