Today we will be switching to a new resource for our daily devotion. Years ago I was introduced to this work but really wasn't ready to listen. After spending time reading Thomas Merton write about the work of Gandhi, I thought we would turn to something Merton wrote in the early 1960s: New Seeds of Contemplation.
Contemplation is the highest expression of (one's) intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is a 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.
Sometimes the only way we hear about contemplation is from someone who appears to be disconnected from others. Merton may have lived for years in a monastery, but he was never disconnected. Rather, there is complete engagement in the sense that life is ripe with the presence of more than we can catch in a glimpse or try to master with a degree. What I am really appreciating in these few opening lines of this book is that importance of being fully aware of one' status of being alive and aware of the life of all that is around us. There is a notion of respect here. I am not merely an observer...I don't merely comment on life...instead, I am present within my life as though each part is sacred and therefore worthy of my notice, engagement, and wonder. I have often found it odd that there are people who talk about contemplation but are not very willing to spend time within the utter awareness and awe of what is around them every day. Rather, they choose to be separate. Contemplation seems to be part of the journey we enter as we find more and more delight in the fullness of life around us even when we are observing that which is painful. For even then, we are facing the fullness of what the day has to offer...and it is good.
Connection: It is a good practice to simply look at another person - especially someone not like me at all - and wonder about what it is to be the other. That may be a daily journey we take often and one that finds us able to appreciate the other...without judging.
You have placed us within rich surroundings, O God. It is in the face of those around us that we are drawn into the life of the day. It is in the watchfulness of the most simple movements of life around us that we again find that there is more to life than what we have planned to make of it. Thanks be to you, O God. Amen.
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