The stripping of pettiness from life in those early days of the war, the sense of unity and mutual help among all sorts and conditions of people, was a thing no one who was in England at that time could ever forget. There was an atmosphere of forgiveness everywhere, that most rare of human qualities...such moments reveal the beauty hidden in the most unlikely persons and affirm the truth, "what a piece of work is man, is woman!"
A hindrance to the fullness of Divine Presence is the lack of silence. The Word comes only in a deeper way when peaceful silence encompasses everything. I may refuse to enter into the night of inner quiet, of non-resistance to the Divine. Then my life is doomed to remain parched and lifeless -- a wasteland. Silence is a gentler rhythm of speaking out and keeping still. The cultivation of silence belongs to the gentle style of life.