Like I said yesterday...what was quoted may need a few days. Here it is again.
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 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. It is a deep resonance in the inmost center of our spirit in which our very life loses its separate voice and re-sounds with the majesty and the mercy of the Hidden and Living One. He answers Himself in us and this is divine life, divine creativity, making all things new. We ourselves become His echo and his answer. It is as if in creating us God asked a question, and in awakening us to contemplation He answered the question, so that the contemplative is at the same time, question and answer.
God answers God's own call to us. We are the ones who respond to the wonder and movement of God's Reign. Merton says it well: "this is divine life." In that life comes the part I think make life unpredictably beautiful and also full of risk. This "life" is "divine creativity, making all things new." We are a part of that is to be and what will be. That is quite a gift given to us. As we remember this, the day is full of the makings of the Reign of God that is already in place and yet is still unfolding. Therefore, this divine creativity is the freedom to open our eyes and be honest about our condition and honest about who we are invited to be. We become a part of that "answer" of what will be...or...how will be get along...or...what will become of us. The contemplative seems to be able to hear the questions and willing to venture into what might be some of the answers to those questions. And yet, knowing that new questions will arise and new answers will always invite us into a world of change that did not see previously.
Connection: Questions about God and the Reign of God may find answers not so much in our theoretical speculation but in our very ordinary life where God promises to Reign. Today is one of those days just waiting for us to walk into that Reign and begin to see how answers begin to unfold.
Holy Word, you bring us along your way and you help us to find the words...the life...that is about to unfold into your blessed Reign. We marvel at your ways and wonder about how we will walk within those ways. And yet, you are here with us to invite us beyond ourselves even as we want to be just who we think we are. Take us into your future - today. Amen.
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