It is often in silence and solitude that you will find your most meaningful real moments. Silence nourishes the soul and heals the heart. It creates an insulated space between you and the noisy, demanding world you live in, a womb of stillness in which you can be reborn over and over again. Silence has a regenerative power of its own. It is sacred. It returns you home. Solitude is very necessary for silences to go deep... Silence will help you see clearly, sometimes for the first time, exactly what is out of balance in your life. When you make the time for the apparent non-doing of silence and solitude, your doing will become much more effective and meaningful.
The earth is languishing for more contemplatives. We have not even been courteous to her, much less respectful. We have never sincerely asked forgiveness for our massive exploitation of her. We have failed to see that she is numinous and to treat her with proper deference as our mother. It is time now for the child to mother the mother. Nothing less than a mysticism that can perceive the diaphany of the divine at the heart of matter itself is capable of experiencing mystical union with nature. Even if we have not had a vivid mystical experience, we can learn in prayer to meditate on what the union could imply.