Silence before the Beloved has deep significance in the quietness of the soul as the individual sinks into the central fire of communion. In the circle of community the most personal elemental chords of life receive their deepest stimulation. In the silent act of breathing and in the unspoken dialogue of the soul with Love, solitary as these are, deep communion can be given.
What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become, except in dreams that blow in from out there bearing the fragrance of islands we have not yet sighted in our waking hours, as in voyaging sometimes the first blossoming branches of our next landfall come bumping against the keel, even in the dark, whole days before the real land rises to meet us.
~ from AN IMAGINARY LIFE by David Malouf