Eremitical Vocation

“Vocation to Solitude. To deliver oneself up, to hand oneself over, entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of woods and hills, or sea, or desert, to sit still while the sun comes up over the land and fills its silences with light… This is a true and special vocation. There are few who 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, “Thoughts in Solitude”