What silence armors us against

Again I am sharing thoughts from Wendy Beckett's "Meditations on Silence. She says that what "silence principally armors us against is Babel; the endless foolish chatter, words used to confound thought, words misused to ward off friendship or attachments, words as occupation. The biblical Babel was a metaphor for the loss of human ability to communicate as a consequence of the rise of different languages; but the foreignness of other tongues is a smoke screen. To express what on means, and to hear what another means, this is a rare thing....We have an absolute need for quiet, for the heart's wordless resting on God."

Living with fifty other women is a joy, but it also makes me appreciate silence!