Thomas Merton vs Pádraig Ó Tuama
Merton, a Trappist, wrote that silence is the matrix from which true speech emerges — that we have nothing to say because we have not yet been quiet enough to know. Ó Tuama, a poet and theologian, makes silence into a daily liturgy — a gap that gives weight to whatever finally arrives. Both treat silence as a precondition, not an absence.