Georgetown University: Silence and Honey Cakes

It has been said that sanctity is inimitable.
While I can think, and probably you can
as well, of some very holy people
who cry out for imitation because of all
their quirks of behaviour, the imitability
in question is not of that kind.
I cannot become holy by copying another’s
path. Like the novice in the desert,
I must watch the elders and learn . . .
from those who have walked
further and worked harder; but then I have
to take my own steps, and create a life
that has never been lived before. . .
The journey is always one that leads into more
not less uniqueness;
all to do once again with the call to be
persons, not individuals.

--Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes, Oxford 2003, p. 95.