One Like Silence

To a fragmented and conflicted world, One Like Silence offers a vision of radical connection, solidarity, union. It opens with the image of two long-estranged lovers joined, after the death of one, by an unbreakable thread that weaves together all forms in a timeless reality. The spaciousness of this metaphor is realized in the various sections of the book as it celebrates the ecstasy of existence ("Out of the Blackness Ecstatic"), grapples with the alienation engendered by trauma and suffering ("The River of Affirmation and Joy") and by fear and hate ("Moon in a Muddy Arroyo"), asserts the underlying unity of nature ("Enchanted Rock"), explores the most intimate of relationships as the archetype and ideal of union ("The Ordeal of Marriage"), and finally follows "the path of love beyond love" to claim the oneness manifesting all the diverse expressions in form ("Harmony of Star and Ditch"). Besides proposing a theory of consciousness in sync with perennial wisdom, this collection points the way to peace, wholeness, and the healing of this noisy, broken world.