Santo Domingo. – The city quiets down. Not completely, but enough to notice what usually goes unnoticed: the echo of footsteps, the pause between two sounds, one's own breathing.
Jesus moves among crowds, but he also withdraws. There are moments in the Gospels when he simply stands apart. He doesn't explain, he doesn't announce, he doesn't put on a show. He just leaves. In the Gospels, Jesus alternates between presence and withdrawal: “Very early in the morning… got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed” (Mark 1:35).
Silence is not absence. It is structure.
In a culture that rewards constant opinion and immediate reaction, silence seems unproductive. But it is in that space that inner order is established.
Mahatma Gandhi summed it up succinctly: “In silence you find answers.”
Well-being begins when we stop filling all the spaces.
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