Silence as a spiritual practice is much more than being able to sit still without talking for 30 minutes or longer. Instead, silence is a quality of presence.  The silence we search for is an overall state of being. It is not something we achieve with great effort, either, but something we uncover that is inside us. Somewhere at our core there is a reservoir of silence…To return regularly to this depth, whether in cloistered silence or in line at the grocery, is called “a habit of silence.” It is not duration that is important, but the returning time after time to the source within us that, in time, shapes who we are.

by Mary Hiles, in “The Way Through,” No. 37, Spring 2011