Contemplation is the highest expression of man'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 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. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that source.
Nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness
in deep down things;
And though the last
lights off the
black West went
Oh, morning,
at the brown brink
eastward, springs . . .
Because the Holy Ghost
over the bent
world broods
with warm breast
and with ah!
bright wings.