In order to listen to God's silence we must escape the din of distractions that normally deafen us to it. Being deafened to the silence within as well as the silence without is corrosive to God-hearing. To be silent is to so empty oneself of the din of transitory distractions that one becomes fully receptive to the silence that always and everywhere underlies them. Silence is that state of spiritual sensitivity in which seekers make themselves available to the silence of God's voice.
Oh what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox. This is what is the matter with us. We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.