I am to LISTEN. I am finding it a hard discipline: Listen to every word that is not said. Listen for silences. I have become insensitive to the power of words because I hear and see too many of them. I don't say to myself, "don't listen to words." I am already a past-master of that. I say, "listen to the silence." And I discover this: because silence seems empty of content I cannot place myself in relation to it, and therefore, I cannot place myself outside it. It is a world I enter, not a world I observe. Silent people bear this out: they seem to carry a world with them, while the unsilent always seem to be scurrying in search of one.
If we are called to be observers and contemplators, we are also called to nourish, to be nourishers, not consumers. Only a nourisher knows when to stop, not to overeat, overindulge, to draw back. To say no. I have a friend who has a coffee mug with the inscription: DON'T JUST DO SOMETHING, STAND THERE ... We often underestimate those who stand there. But I have had to do some new thinking about all this, as I have had to do some new thinking about the sound of the tree falling in the forest. If we are unwilling to practice the gift of contemplation, we are likely to get stuck in one position, and to be fearful of changing it, and so we cling, unable to laugh at ourselves and move on.