The inimitable Thomas Merton, who brought so much to life, for so many of us.
I’m still thrilled by his eloquence more than 30 years after I first came across him by accident in a shabby room in France.
Something wonderful happened back then and when I read Merton I realised I wasn’t alone.
“…contemplation reaches out to the knowledge and even to the experience of the transcendent and inexpressible God. It knows God by seeming to touch Him. Or rather it knows Him as if it had been invisibly touched by Him…. Touched by Him Who has no hands, but Who is pure Reality and the source of all that is real!…. Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him Who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in everything that is, and Who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being: for we ourselves are words of His. But we are words that are meant to respond to Him, to answer to Him, to echo Him, and even in some way to contain Him and signify Him. Contemplation is this echo.
New Seeds of Contemplation (Ch. 1)
James RQ Clark 