“To
deliver oneself up, hand oneself over, entrust oneself completely to
the silence of a wide landscape of woods and hill, or sea, or desert: to
sit still while the sun comes up over the land and fills its silence
with light. To pray and work in the morning and to labor in meditation in
the evening when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills
itself with darkness and with stars. 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, and to turn the very substance of their life into a living and
vigilant silence.” Thomas Merton