A couple of weeks ago, on a frigid winter afternoon, I went hiking through a forest preserve near my home.  Although very little snow was present, all of the lakes were locked in ice, trapped, it seemed, by the weight of the season.  Nothing moved in them, nothing spoke from them.  The silence was total.
     Aponia, I thought, aphonia.  Stillness and silence.  How good, I thought, how good that in a crowded and noisy world I can experience silence, that I can touch stillness and vapidity.  That I can know the absence of sound.  It's a personal world, yes, but it's good to step aside from its immediate cacaphony and consider why that is.  To ponder the looming and essential loquaciousness of the beyond.  To confront the person of God.
     It's easy to talk, it's easy to speak.  It's not as simple to do neither one.  Yet this is the only way we will know what to say.
     Listen to the universe, hear its God:  the Word became flesh, full of grace and truth.