No TV, no cell phone, no social media, no family or friends. Just alone in silence for sixty days. Written from a small cabin in the mountains above Santa Cruz, California, Bok's diary recounts his retreat into solitude and his search for a return to the simplicity of pure being. Without distraction, he has no choice but to face whatever comes—whether it's the incessant chatter of the mind, the arising of overwhelming emotions, or the simple observations of running water and birdsong. We say it's Bok's diary, but he draws us in so intimately that these sixty days become our own. Through this intense and immersive process, both for Bok and the reader, a deeper place is found within, a place of stillness and well being. You may be surprised what Bok finds, or more importantly, what he doesn't find. Alexandra Burda’s illustrations are a perfect compliment to the sparseness, sensitivity and beauty of the text.

Sister Jeremy Hall, O.S.B., a member of Saint Benedict's Monastery, lived as a hermit for 20 years. During that time she gained renown as a wellspring of wisdom and gifted retreat leader.

Quietness and conflict, life and death, place and memory, politics and pity, friendship and peace. Jill Segger weaves a tapestry of poetry and prose that takes us on journeys of personal transformation set against (and responsive to) the backdrop of turmoil in the world around us.

Originating from weekly talks given to a contemplative community of monks and nuns, the meditations in this book aim to help people surrender their lives to God.

In ancient Greece, the spoken word connoted power, whether in the free speech accorded to citizens or in the voice of the poet, whose song was thought to know no earthly bounds. But how did silence fit into the mental framework of a society that valued speech so highly? Here Silvia Montiglio provides the first comprehensive investigation into silence as a distinctive and meaningful phenomenon in archaic and classical Greece. Arguing that the notion of silence is not a universal given but is rather situated in a complex network of associations and values, Montiglio seeks to establish general principles for understanding silence through analyses of cultural practices, including religion, literature, and law. Unlike the silence of a Christian before an ineffable God, which signifies the uselessness of words, silence in Greek religion paradoxically expresses the power of logos--for example, during prayer and sacrifice, it serves as a shield against words that could offend the gods. Montiglio goes on to explore silence in the world of the epic hero, where words are equated with action and their absence signals paralysis or tension in power relationships. Her other examples include oratory, a practice in which citizens must balance their words with silence in very complex ways in order to show that they do not abuse their right to speak. Inquiries into lyric poetry, drama, medical writings, and historiography round out this unprecedented study, revealing silence as a force in its own right.

An inspiring book that follows this family's journey as they struggle to restore an autistic son's speech.

In A Silence of Words, Olivia Dresher's poetic aphorisms and other brevities, taken from her first few years at Twitter beginning in 2009, express her devotion to short forms that she also explored in her book In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing. Ten years later, in 2019, she has a significant following at Twitter and has written over 58,000 tweets, of which 874 appear in this book. As one of her followers noted, "You write as you breathe, shaping everything with some sort of second nature." Published by Impassio Press, www.impassio.com