The truth is formed in silence and work and suffering – with which we become true. But we interfere with God’s work by talking too much about ourselves – even telling God what we ought to do – advising God how to make us perfect and listening for God’s voice to answer us with approval. We soon grow impatient and turn aside from the silence that disturbs us (the silence in which God’s work can best be done), and we invent the answer and the approval which will never come.     Thomas Merton, journal entry November 12, 1952