I did not expect anything remarkable to happen in the desert. I traveled there as part of my master’s program in leadership, and our class was assigned to spend ten days at a Catholic monastery in the Mojave Desert. It was a silent retreat, except for a few brief windows of time when we were allowed to speak with the monks. I had never been around people who held silence the way they did. Their quiet felt spacious and steady, as if it came from somewhere practiced and true, as if the silence itself was speaking and they had learned how to listen.

I was assigned to interview one of the oldest monks. He had migrated from China years earlier and had lived most of his life in the monastery. Sitting across from him, I felt scattered and unsure of myself. My questions came out tentative, as though I was trying to earn permission to be there.

I said, “You have lived here for 50 years. You must really love your brothers.” I expected a long response or a story filled with warmth. Instead, he smiled gently, the kind of smile that carries peace rather than performance.

 “It is not about love,” he said, “although I do love them. They are my brothers. It is about commitment. I am committed to them and committed to a life of prayer and service.”

His response landed differently in me. At that point in my life, I had heard people talk about love and commitment, but I had rarely seen them lived out. Watching him embody commitment, quietly and without fanfare, shifted something in me. What he had chosen clearly required sacrifice, but it did not feel heavy. It felt steady. It felt joyful.

I felt a quiet admiration—and a longing to feel that kind of simple contentment and joy in my own life.

I stumbled through a few more questions, still finding my footing. Then I asked how the monks resolved conflict while living in community every day. He paused before answering, letting the silence sit between us without trying to fill it. In that pause, I felt how practiced he was at trusting the quiet to do its work.

 “I cannot speak for anyone else,” he said, “but I choose to only speak when I can improve the silence.”

I thought about all the moments in my life when I spoke too quickly. When I filled the space because silence felt awkward. When I reacted instead of listening. When my words were driven more by urgency than care. His sentence held up a mirror without judgment and showed me how often I forgot that silence is also a choice.

For the remainder of the retreat, I began to notice silence differently. It was not empty. It was not avoidance. It felt like a place where breath could settle before becoming words. I noticed how the monks moved through their days without rushing to explain themselves. They trusted quiet. They did not fight it.

When I left the monastery, the monk’s words stayed with me. They followed me into conversations I wanted to control and moments when my old instinct would have been to explain myself or rush to fill the silence so I wouldn’t feel exposed. Before speaking, I started asking myself whether my words would improve the silence already present.

I was used to feeling uncomfortable with silence. It exposes my impatience and my need to be acknowledged. What began to shift was my awareness of what silence does to me—how often I speak to relieve my own tension rather than to bring clarity. And if I don’t speak in those moments, I feel vulnerable, like standing without armor.

Since then, I’ve been listening differently—not just to others but to myself. I notice how much wisdom I drown out by insisting on being heard. I’m less interested in filling space and more interested in honoring it. 

I’ve discovered that silence is not empty; it is a container for truth, holding things my words often cover up.❧

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