When I first came into the country, I was, more than anything else, looking for the silence that would permit me to think, know myself and figure out what the rest of my life should be.

I knew I wanted and needed to change.

I spent a year on the top of a mountain with two dogs and the books and writing of Thomas Merton. I was not in the wilderness; a restaurant was right at the bottom of my mountain.

But I was alone for most days of a whole year, the winter up there was transformative. Life changed after that; it was never the same; nothing is the same.

In the silence, I could finally hear, so I could finally see.

I left my everyday life and never returned.

I knew I had to leave cities and suburbs; I needed more silence, nature, and access to the animal world. I believe human beings are broken when they are cut off from nature and animals.

That is why I feel so strongly about the ignorance and obliviousness that causes people to cleanse our world of carriage horses and elephants in the name of being humane. Our children will never know the wonder of these creatures.

You will not hear that tragic misconception in the country. We all live around animals; we know better. Nature is all around us.

In a world of noise, confusion, violence, and cruelty, I realized that I had to find places of silence for inner discipline, self-awareness, truth, and peace.

In silence, true love can and will (and did)  blossom.

Human beings need it. They suffer without it.

Merton wrote that the world of men has forgotten the joys of silence the peace of solitude, both necessary for what he calls the “fullness of living.”

Historians, psychologists, and spiritualists have argued for years that men and women cannot be happy unless they are in contact with the springs of spiritual life, which are hidden in the depths of their souls and freed only in silence.

If humans are exiled  constantly from their own homes, locked out of spiritual solitude, cut off from nature and our life partners, the animals, than they cease to be whole people.

Just look at the world around us.

I believe there was in me a dimmed light, a buried wholeness. I had to get to it.

My faith is that there is an inexhaustible softness and sweetness in all things human, a silence that is the foundation of living and joy.

“It rises,” wrote Merton,” in wordless gentleness and flows out to people  from the unseen roots of all created being.”

This good rises in silence. There was too much noise in our world for me to hear or listen or think. I had to find stillness.

For me, and I can only speak for me, I have been liberated by silence. All of life becomes a form of prayer in silence,  from which there is no distraction.

My silence is all a prayer.

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I changed the photo of Bud above to reflect the true color and depth of his eyes. The picture was taken by my Leica Monochrome and altered in Lightroom. I call the photo Bud’s Eyes, it is a photo painting.