Pico Ayer

Not if it's the only way I can learn to be a little less selfish, was my reply. when my daughter at 13 was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer, I knew that sitting in silence above the blue-green waters for three days was the best way I could find the clarity and calm I would need as soon as I stepped back into her hospital ward.

Not if it's the only way I can learn to be a little less selfish, was my reply. when my daughter at 13 was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer, I knew that sitting in silence above the blue-green waters for three days was the best way I could find the clarity and calm I would need as soon as I stepped back into her hospital ward.

I couldn't make Sachi's sickness go away, but I could try to protect her from my own useless worries and resentments. Spending time in silence put a frame around my agitated thoughts and disclosed something real that stretched beyond and behind them. To come upon a place that exists outside the realm of constant change makes change a little bit less scary.

I couldn't make Sachi's sickness go away, but I could try to protect her from my own useless worries and resentments. Spending time in silence put a frame around my agitated thoughts and disclosed something real that stretched beyond and behind them. To come upon a place that exists outside the realm of constant change makes change a little bit less scary.

I couldn't make Sachi's sickness go away, but I could try to protect her from my own useless worries and resentments. Spending time in silence put a frame around my agitated thoughts and disclosed something real that stretched beyond and behind them. To come upon a place that exists outside the realm of constant change makes change a little bit less scary.

In all my seven decades, I've never seen so many so close to despair as they are right now. A world is fractured. Wars are breaking out on every side. Wildfires, like the one that rewrote my life, tear through every hill. In those circumstances, the simple journey into silence allows me to step out of the moment and into something more expansive.

In all my seven decades, I've never seen so many so close to despair as they are right now. A world is fractured. Wars are breaking out on every side. Wildfires, like the one that rewrote my life, tear through every hill. In those circumstances, the simple journey into silence allows me to step out of the moment and into something more expansive.

In all my seven decades, I've never seen so many so close to despair as they are right now. A world is fractured. Wars are breaking out on every side. Wildfires, like the one that rewrote my life, tear through every hill. In those circumstances, the simple journey into silence allows me to step out of the moment and into something more expansive.

Not everyone I know can afford to go on retreat, but some liberation is always at hand if only you can sit quietly away from your devices, seek out a temple or church, just take a walk. Years ago, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton observed, when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real.

Not everyone I know can afford to go on retreat, but some liberation is always at hand if only you can sit quietly away from your devices, seek out a temple or church, just take a walk. Years ago, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton observed, when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real.

Not everyone I know can afford to go on retreat, but some liberation is always at hand if only you can sit quietly away from your devices, seek out a temple or church, just take a walk. Years ago, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton observed, when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real.

It's hard to get tired of the birdsong above the wooden shed or the sun rising above that distant hill. So often it's my mind that makes my problems. It cuts the world up into you and me and complicates the simple. After more than a hundred trips into wide-awake silence, I give thanks every time I come back to a reality far bigger than myself.

It's hard to get tired of the birdsong above the wooden shed or the sun rising above that distant hill. So often it's my mind that makes my problems. It cuts the world up into you and me and complicates the simple. After more than a hundred trips into wide-awake silence, I give thanks every time I come back to a reality far bigger than myself.

It's hard to get tired of the birdsong above the wooden shed or the sun rising above that distant hill. So often it's my mind that makes my problems. It cuts the world up into you and me and complicates the simple. After more than a hundred trips into wide-awake silence, I give thanks every time I come back to a reality far bigger than myself.

So it was the fact of being stripped down to nothing that made a Catholic monastery seductive to me.

So it was the fact of being stripped down to nothing that made a Catholic monastery seductive to me.

So it was the fact of being stripped down to nothing that made a Catholic monastery seductive to me.

Where are you now? I'm in Santa Barbara where happily today it's quite calm. The winds are low and we're feeling very lucky compared with our neighbors two hours to the south.

Where are you now? I'm in Santa Barbara where happily today it's quite calm. The winds are low and we're feeling very lucky compared with our neighbors two hours to the south.

Where are you now? I'm in Santa Barbara where happily today it's quite calm. The winds are low and we're feeling very lucky compared with our neighbors two hours to the south.