Be Still: on the first Sunday of Lent

Word

I, who live by words, am wordless when
I try my words in prayer. All language turns
To silence. Prayer will take my words and then
Reveal their emptiness. The stilled voice learns
To hold its peace, to listen with the heart
To silence that is joy, is adoration.
The self is shattered, all words torn apart
In this strange patterned time of contemplation
That, in time, breaks time, breaks words, breaks me,
And then, in silence, leaves me healed and mended.
I leave, returned to language, for I see
Through words, even when all words are ended.
I, who live by words, am wordless when
I turn me to the Word to pray. Amen.

--Madeleine L'Engle from The Weathered Heart

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Here's more for your reflections:

Silence in the Christian Tradition

Nothing is so like God as silence.
— Meister Eckhart

Silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation. In order to hear that language, we must learn to be still and to rest in God.
— Thomas Keating

Let me rest in Your will and be silent. Then the light of Your joy will warm my life. Its fire will burn in my heart and shine for Your glory. This is what I live for. Amen, amen.
— Thomas Merton

Silence will illuminate you in God...
and deliver you from phantoms of ignorance.
Silence will unite you to God. . . .
In the beginning we have to force ourselves
to be silent. But then from our very silence
is born something that draws us into deeper silence.
— Isaac of Nineveh, 7th century Syrian monk

It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.
— Thomas Merton

The silence is there within us. What we have to do is to enter into it, to become silent, to become the silence. The purpose of meditation and the challenge of meditation is to allow ourselves to become silent enough to allow this interior silence to emerge. Silence is the language of the spirit.
— John Mains

Silence of the heart is necessary so you can hear God everywhere — in the closing of the door, in the person who needs you, in the birds that sing, in the flowers, in the animals.
— Mother Teresa

The friend of silence comes close to God. In secret he converses with him and receives his light.
— John Climacus

Silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation. In order to hear that language, we must learn to be still and to rest in God.
— Thomas Keating

Are they moved by a sense of human need for silence, for reflection, for inner seeking? So they want to get away from the noise and tension of modern life, at least for a little while, in order to relax their minds and wills and seek a blessed healing sense of inner unity, reconciliation, integration?
— Thomas Merton