We are often bombarded by so many extraneous stimuli that it is difficult to pray, much less remain attentive in the silence. I can't help but wonder how many times God has called my name and has caught me in my distraction. Perhaps the sum and substance of our conversations with God are being able to talk together as we would with our closest friend. In any good conversation, there are moments of silence -- intimate silences filled with the comfort of the presence of the other.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.