I was walking in the open air on a beautiful spring morning. The wheat was growing green, the birds were singing, the dew was sparkling, the smoke rising; a transfiguring light lay over everything; this was only a tiny fragment of Earth – and yet the idea seemed to me not only beautiful, but also so true and obvious that she was an Angel – an Angel so sumptuous, so fresh, so like a flower and at the same time so firm and so composed, who was moving through the sky.
Silence is not merely negative -- a pause between words, a temporary cessation of speech -- but properly understood, it is highly positive: an attitude of attentive alertness, of vigilance, and above all, of listening.