Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God.
And only those who see take off their shoes;
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Fasting from words, fasting from a volume of speech, being willing to humbly accept the yoke of silence and quietude deprives the tongue of the mastery of our hearts and minds. The tongue is a very useful tool for the art of love and for the art of prayer, but it is also the means by which we afflict others and even our own selves so often. So it must be called into holy obedience.