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 that
land and fills its silences with
light. To pray and work in the
morning and to labor and rest in
the afternoon, and to sit still
again 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.
I have learned to treat my garden as the sacred place it is and it continually nourishes me both in body and in spirit Earth is sacred too, and whatever we do to her will come back to us many times over. If we treat her as merely a resource and a place to throw our refuse, we will reap only death and disease. If we treat her as the sacred place she is, we will reap the benefits of living on sacred ground.;
