-
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” -
Mid-Life Hermit
“If we are aware and honest, we may find that, as the years pass, the world functions quite well without our constant oversight. Yes, the day may come when hours pass without our cell phone breaking into song. The constant hum of electronic voices breathlessly announcing news and weather will begin to bore us. We will have reached a major milestone called mid-life.”
– Paul and Karen Fredette, “Consider the Ravens”
