I have visited a few different Trappist monasteries especially St. Benedict's Monastery, in Snowmass CO. for over thirty years.  Every one of them I hear silence in their monastery ground.  One beautiful February crisp cold sunny day I walked to the monastery and saw this saintly abbot Joseph was chipping the ice on the cement steps.  I stopped to say hello, and for a few seconds it was Jesus who was looking at me.   When I met with Fr. Keating, I felt God's presence  because he was in the presence of God.   

 One time I was having a private retreat at the New Melleray abbey in Dubuque, IA and  had a car trouble.  I met this monk who fixes the monastery cars and explained what is happening with my car.  And I heard silence of this mechanical monk.   I will never forget him. 
"Plunge into the activities of life, we lose the faculty of listening, and we alienate ourselves from our very source, silence, God"  Raymon Panikkar