Central to any quest for meaning is the notion of silence.  Be it religious or not, a quest will not succeed unless the entrant is taking time for silence.
     Buried in one of the historical books of the Hebrew Bible is the account of how the prophet Elijah, thinking that, due to his forceful resistance to the spiritual declinations of the Israeli monarchy, everyone was against him, fled to a high mountain to rest and pray.
As he prayed, Elijah encountered what we might call a series of epiphanies, appearances of God.  First, he experienced an earthquake.  Then, a fire.  Finally, he heard a gentle blowing.  And in this gentle blowing, God spoke.
     What does this have to do with silence?  Like we often feel, Elijah felt himself overwhelmed by challenges.  So he prayed.
     More importantly, however, he waited.  He waited, in silence, for God.  Elijah had to let go of everything around him in order to hear the voice of the divine.
     As do we.  If you do not find it necessary to believe in God, realize that you perhaps have missed the most crucial part of being a human being:  apart from listening, in silence, to all the realities in the boundaries of what you see, you will never hear what is most true.
     We must be quiet if we hope to understand, fully, where we are.