Wolves have what it takes to live in peace. They communicate lavishly. By gestures -- the smile, for instance -- and by sounds, from the big social howls to the conversational whimpers. They even seek to control by sound first, not biting. A full-grown wolf will plead with you not to take its possessions. And you in turn can plead with a wolf. It glances at your eyes, desists from what has displeased you and walks off as if indifferent.
Vocation to solitude: To deliver oneself up, to hand oneself over, to 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. 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 an belong completely to silence, let it soak into their bones, breathe nothing but silence, feed on silence, and turn the very substance of their life into a living and vigilant silence. [Yet each of us is blessed when we offer our silence to the world as we can.]