Quotes About Contemplation

calling out to the world to forget everything except the sublime.

She daydreamed and made up stories in her head, and the cloister and solitude of the pieta suited her.

Looking at yourself in a mirror isn't exactly a study of life.

Did we really want her back? Hmmm . . .

What do you do when there are no passing planes?

finally I say            all right, it is improbable, all right, there is no God. And then as if I'm focusing a magnifying glass on dry leaves, God blazes up. It's the attention, maybe, to what isn't            there that makes the notion flare like a forest fire until I have to spend the afternoon dragging the hose to put it out. . . .

From deep in the tradition, from The Cloud of Unknowing , a fourteenth-century text from an unnamed English monk: "You only need a tiny scrap of time to move toward God." The words slap. Busyness is not much of an excuse if it only takes a minute or two to move toward God. But the monk's words console, too. For, of time and person, it seems that scraps are all I have to bring forward. That my ways of coming to God these days are all scraps.

But if roteness is a danger, it is also the way liturgy works. When you don't have to think all the time about what words you are going to say next, you are free to fully enter into the act of praying; you are free to participate in the life of God.

Did everyone think about death practically every day, or was it just me? Did everyone wonder why we existed, and if life was nothing but a fluke?

But at that moment, Danny decided not to think about it — or anything else

possibly even food, to drift onto the pebbly beach

You live an insular existence, going from your soundproofed cars to your air-conditioned, insulated houses. People would not say God is dead if they only looked up at the spectacular panorama of the night sky, or had an unobstructed view of the sunset.

Turn your attention to all that is dying and decaying. Look at dead leaves, a lifeless tree, a dead animal. Regard anything that is slowly returning to its constituent elements. Smell the pungent odor of decay. Inhale the effluvium of the dissolution process. The object of this exercise is to know the Earth, not just in its telluric aspect (flower bearing soil), but also in its chthonic aspect. Let death talk to you.

When one begins to notice that this world has reflections of the Real and contemplates on that idea or uses that reality map often, it seems to create an attraction where the sacred becomes more apparent. Noticing the Sacred makes the Sacred more noticeable as it were. It even influences the content of the other dream world.

One goal of the daily time of contemplation is to become aware of the essential in life, to become aware of that, which does not change upon death. If you can find that which is eternal in yourselves, suddenly your lives will have attained much significance and meaning.

Fourth, visualize a brilliant star blazing above your head, inside the egg.

Of each particular thing, ask: "What is it in itself, in its own construction?" —Marcus Aurelius

Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.

I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor.

Stop and take your time to notice things and make those things you notice matter.

A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are

I have measured my life with coffee spoons and do I dare to eat a peach?' 'DO I DARE DISTURB THE UNIVERSE?

parking lot.

He had not been praying, but dreaming - which, she would realize later, came to almost the same thing.