An Excerpt from A Sabbath Life: One Woman's Search for Wholeness by Kathleen Hirsch
In her fine memoir, Kathleen Hirsch writes about her midlife transformations. She uses the spiritual practice of silence as a catalyst.

"What, I ask myself, do I think I am doing? I, who have never stopped working, never ceased shaping circumstance and opportunity, making and checking off an interminable to-do list, filling as many hours in the day with my work as has been physically possible (and then some), in contact with a large circle of peers?

"I cannot write my way out of this crossroad, or not easily. I cannot use words the way I am accustomed to. I need a new language, one that arises from the silence of the heart.

"This is not about 'falling' silent. It is about choosing silence as the only valid starting point for genuine self-possession. Silence as an antidote to compulsive overactivity. Silence as a standing still. A taking stock. Silence as a posture of listening, until once again I hear the voice within me.

"How do women find the right way to be silent, to stand still? In so masterfully filling the script of our times — achievement, autonomy, power, voice — how many of us left our true inner silence at the stage door or back in the rehearsal rooms of our youth? What calls to us from the silence that we have not heard for longer than we care to remember?"