"Everyone has experienced at some time in their life, when they were with the person they loved, or perhaps at a time of deep sorrow or pain that there is a peculiar power in silence. Silence comes naturally at times of great significance in our life because we feel we are coming into a direct contact with some truth of such meaning that words would distract us, and prevent us from fully entering into that meaning. The power that silence has is to allow this truth to emerge, to rise to the surface, to become visible. It happens naturally, in its own time and fashion. We know that we are not responsible for making it appear, but we know it has a personal meaning for us. We know it is greater than we are and we find a perhaps unexpected humility within ourselves that leads us to a real attentive silence. We let the truth be.

But there is also something in all of us that incites us to control others, to defuse the power we dimly apprehend in a moment of truth, to protect ourselves from its transforming power by neutralizing its otherness and imposing our own identity upon it. The crime of idolatry is precisely creating our own god in our own image and likeness. Rather than encounter God who is awesomely different from ourselves, we construct a toy model of God in our own psychic and emotional image. In doing this we do no harm to God, of course, as unreality has no power over God, but we do debase and scatter ourselves, surrendering the potential and divine glory of our humanity for the false glitter of the golden calf. The truth is so much more exciting, so much more wonderful. God is not a reflection of our consciousness but we are reflections of God..."

--John Main OSB, Word Into Silence