For the sake of Silence

Taken from "A Place Apart" and "O Holy Mountain" by M. Basil Pennington. Quoted in-'Disciplines of the Inner Life,' by Bob Benson and Michael Benson

"Unfortunately, in seeing ourselves as we truly are,
not all that we see is beautiful and attractive.
This is undoubtedly part of the reason
we flee silence.
We do not want to be confronted
with our hypocrisy, our phoniness.
We see how false and fragile is the false self we project.
We have to go through this painful experience to
come to our true self.
It is a harrowing journey,
a death to self-the false self-
and no one wants to die.
But it is the only path to life,
to freedom, to peace, to true love.

And it begins with silence.

We cannot give ourselves to love
if we do not know and possess ourselves.

This is the great value of silence.

It is the pathway to all we truly want.
That is why Saint Benedict speaks of silence
as if it were a value in itself:
for the sake of silence...

Silence is the very presence of God-always there.
But activity hides it.
We need to leave activity long
enough to discover the Presence-
then we can return to activity with it.

Stillness is present throughout the run at every point.
But if one only runs,
he never knows stillness.
God is present in all beings,
but we will never be aware of him
if we never stop and leave behind all beings to be to him."
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'Be still and know that I am God.'

I wonder if we cannot know that He is God
unless we are still.