Speak to me of serenity, of treasures yet to be found, of peace that flows like a river. Tell me of tranquil places that no hand has marred, no storm has scarred. Give me visions of standing in sunlight or the feeling of spring mist against my cheek as I live and move and breathe. Show me paths that wind through wild lilies and beds of buttercups. Sing me songs like the mingled voices of wrens and meadowlarks, the lowing of gentle cows, the soft mother-call of a mare to her colt. Lead me past a glass-smooth pond where frogs croak of coming-out parties, their graduation from frisky tadpoles to squat green frogs. Find me a place in the sunlight to sit and think and listen to the sweet inner voice that says so quietly, "Peace, be still."
The person who loves never abandons contemplation. On the contrary, s/he alone thirsts for it in the right spirit ... God gives Love to those in prayer, and the more s/he loves others, the better s/he can understand. Being filled with God's love, one is capable of a new love for one another -- a joyful and self-forgetting love. Love brings contemplation itself into the mystery of change. It is no longer a neutral point from which the transformations of love are beheld; it is carried away in the flood of the love which is ever the same and ever new, forever changing.