Reflection
A contemplative person is imbued with the presence of the sacred in all life and in this earth. This view is not naïve. It recognizes the pain and distortions in the world. Yet, while acknowledging what is wrong, it enables one to see through and work toward what is possible. The wars among nations, the hatreds and prejudices, the destruction of species, the pollution of our planet are all seen as painful and in need of healing. In the eyes of the contemplative person, they are aberrations which cry out for conversion and change. To have a contemplative view is to be a unifier, to see creation as integrated, and to reverence all its expressions. One is enabled to view everything with respect and work with others toward forgiveness and healing.
Prayer
Bless us with the gift of contemplative vision.
Action
Am I aware of the Sacred in life? How can I reverence the sacred in our world?
Suggested Reading
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of God’s hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
Psalm 19
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
John13:34-35
Real contemplation, in other words, is not for its own sake. It doesn’t take us out of reality. On the contrary, it puts us in touch with the world around us by giving us the distance we need to see where we are more clearly.
Joan Chittister
Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source.
Thomas Merton
When we acknowledge that all of life is sacred and that each act is an act of choice and therefore sacred, then life is a sacred dance lived consciously each moment. When we live at this level, we participate in the creation of a better world.
Scout Cloud Lee
What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.
Meister Eckhart
A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.
Lewis Mumford
Love’s greatest gift is its ability to make everything it touches sacred.
Barbara De Angelis
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Albert Einstein
It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.
Rachel Carson
The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.
Willa Cather
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery