I have an interest in the word "you" — the address that intimates use for each other, that yearning we might have, that sense of addressing self, other, Other, the void, the past, the unknown, the deeply known. That word allows me spaciousness without definition, and I like it, so I regularly repeat the word "you", in Irish, with the in and out of breath, until I've forgotten who is speaking and who is being addressed. ("The eye with which I see God / is the eye with which I see myself", my bewildering friend Meister Eckhart says.)
Is this a prayer? Sure. Is it a prayer? Why not? Is it a prayer? No. Is it? Yes. Too many years of theological study have immunized me from any interest in definitions that ask the impossible of the intellect. I'm interested in practices and signposts to the present. And breath is such a signpost, such a practice, and such an infinity.
There has to be enough communication so that silence can be a grace. That kind of silence demands a deeper love, and until that much love is developed, there is no point in pretending that the love is there when it isn't. The justification of silence in our life is that we love one another to be silent together ... In the depths of community life, we realize the grace of being silent together, but we don't arrive at this by excluding others or treating them as objects. It happens gradually as we learn to love ... The need is for a true silence which is alive and which carries a loving presence.