Basking in solitude, Silence is
the Friend who stills
lurking desires, as
Wisdom cuts through tangled
webs of illusion.
Meditation lights the Flame.
~ from WALKING WITH WISDOM by Nan C. Merrill
That is not to suggest that we can live harmlessly, or strictly at our own expense; we depend upon other creatures and survive by their deaths. To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.