From the current issue on Silence and Prayer:
William L. Brownsberger, Silence (pdf).
From the article:
Silence is not an empty space to be filled but is full of meaning for him who has ears to hear it. The person draws himself toward silence by collecting himself—his faculty, attentions, and intentions—and yet it is silence itself, with its Word beyond all human significance, that finally draws the person. When the person refrains from the distraction of chatter and the fabrication of (often banal) meaning, it is in the abyss to which he has entrusted himself that he finds himself. This person lives no longer outside himself on the unstable foundation of insignificant meaning but in recollection, with its unitive, luminescent silence.