The Intimacy of Silence

I am sitting with this person

who doesn’t know how to shut up

and I want to strangle him.

Most people are terrified of silence.

They will chatter on about absolutely nothing

just to avoid it.

It’s not that they love the sound of their own voices,

it’s that they can’t stand the absence,

the quiet, the nothing.

The reason they hate it so, I think,

is that silence is incredibly intimate.

And intimacy scares people.

Listen to Najat:

Words are clothes,

but silence is nakedness.

Prayer is no time for modesty.

If you really want to get close to Allah,

you must not be afraid to get naked with Him.

(Thanks to Dan Prechtel for his help with a tricky bit of translation on this one—JRM)