a living silence

To deliver oneself up,
to hand oneself over,
entrust oneself completely to the silence
of a wide landscape of woods and hills,
or sea and desert; to sit still while
the sun comes up over the land
and fills its silences with light.


Few are willing to belong completely, 
to such silence, to let it soak into their bones,
to breathe nothing but silence, to feed
on silence, and to turn the very substance of their life 
into a living and vigilant silence. 










Thomas Merton
From:  Thoughts in Solitude
Photo:  Peter Bowers