God is the encounter we can not control, that we will never get to the bottom of.
One of the most dramatic moments of silence in the New Testament is Jesus' silence before His judges. The Gospel shows us how the high priest and Pontius Pilate urges Jesus to speak. And we are told in John's Gospel that when Jesus gives no answer to the charges made against Him, Pilate is "amazed."
In this story it shows that Jesus was precisely in the position of someone having His voice taken away. He is a person who has been reduced to silence by the violence and injustice of the world. But then, mysteriously, He turns this around. His silence, His complete presence and openness becomes a puzzle to those who have power. Pilate's fear in the face of Jesus' silence is a reminder that, in this case, Jesus takes the powerlessness that has been forced on Him and turns it around so that His silence becomes a place in the world where the mystery of God is present.
In a small way, that's what happens when we seek to be truly and fully silent or let ourselves be silenced by the mystery of God. We become a place where the mystery of God happens.
Let's consider how we in our attempts to be silent become "silencing" realities - like the nun in the chapel or the meditator in the meditation hall who bring us to silence. Like Jesus before the judges, we have to be the place where the question of God, the mystery of God, comes alive. We will create a curiosity in others, just by letting God be in us. In that we are recognizing that we are powerless to express, let alone manage, the mystery that is God being in us.
Being Christian requires us to come to terms with those moments when silence is imposed on us. And ultimately everybody is silent in the face of the utterly unmanageable, which is God.