When I first began to enter the Silence, it felt like an alien atmosphere filled with menacing voices, capricious thoughts, uncomfortable feelings. But as the days and weeks passed, the Silence became a welcoming friend, a presence like the warmth of a fire in which I encountered the Divine Lover of my soul and experienced my Self as God's Beloved.
And Wisdom's self
Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude
Where, with her best nurse Contemplation,
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings.