Silence

"Silence precedes, undergirds, and grounds everything. Unless we learn how to live there, go there, and abide in this different phenomenon, everything--words, events, relationships, identities--becomes rather superficial, without depth or context. We are left to search for meaning in a life of events and situations which need to increasingly contain ever higher stimulation, more excitement, and more color, to add vital signs to our inherently bored and boring existence. This need for stimulations is the character of America. We are in danger of becoming just a shell with less and less inside, and less contact with the depth and reality of things-- where all the lasting vitality is found. This is what Jesus calls "a spring inside us-- welling up unto eternal life" (John 4: 14). God is always found at the depths of things, even the depths of our sin and brokenness. And in the depths, it is always silent."  

-- Richard Rohr