Reflection
Contemplation is about very basic, very real things. It is about seeing God in everyone, finding God everywhere, and responding to all of life as a message from God. Contemplation is not a road show about visions. It is not an exalted state of being. It is simply consciousness of the Ultimate in the immediate. Contemplatives do not seek visions. They simply seek to know God.
Joan Chittister
Prayer
As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.
Psalm 42
Action
How can I attune myself to be conscious of the “Ultimate in the immediate”?
Suggested Reading
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
Mark 1:35
The life of contemplation in action and purity of heart is, then, a life of great simplicity and inner liberty. One is not seeking anything special or demanding any particular satisfaction. One is content with what is. One does what is to be done, and the more concrete it is, the better. One is not worried about the results of what is done. One is content to have good motives and not too anxious about making mistakes. In this way one can swim with the living stream of life and remain at every moment in contact with God, in the hiddenness and ordinariness of the present moment with its obvious task.” –
The Inner Experience, Thomas Merton
The greatness of contemplation can be given to none but those who love.
Pope St. Gregory the Great
Contemplation is nothing else than a secret, peaceful, and loving infusion of God, which if admitted, will set the soul on fire with the Spirit of love.
St. John of the Cross
That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.
Edgar Allan Poe
Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.
Jean Arp
What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.
Meister Eckhart
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