I often wonder what it would be like if we dared to love this life -- the fragile and the vulnerable, the endangered, daring to be humble before the magnitude of our beginnings, daring to learn our species into a stubborn and pliant wonder, until reverence shines in all that we do -- until we live an economics of reverence -- until it permeates education, development and health care, homes and relationship, arts and agriculture -- a reverence for life, for planetary, social and personal wholeness. This is our purpose now. May we do it well, with thoroughness and love.
On the surface, silence was simple: we didn't speak unless it was necessary. But what was the point of silence? The point was, we learned, not mere silence, not silence to preserve some sort of order, but something much greater. In silence the idea was to recollect ourselves, to place ourselves more squarely in the presence of God than we would if people were talking to us all the time. We could pray, we could meditate, we could contemplate.