Vocation to Solitude. To deliver oneself up, to hand oneself up, to hand oneself over, entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide landsccape 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. 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, to feed on silence, and to turn the very substance of their life into a living and vigilant silence. ~Thomas Merton