Through the cycles and seasons of our lives' as we continue to grow in awareness, we begin to feel more at home in the world. We begin to appreciate and accept who we are... We move from periods of joyful expansion into a dark night of the soul. We seem to reap the harvest of the sustained practice of attention and compassion and come to know ourselves in a new and more forgiving light, only to forget and return to what we thought were old, discarded ways. We suffer and we experience great delight. Yet deep within is a place of understanding, and to find this place is to come home.
Advent is a season to ponder "all these things" in our hearts:
Thomas Merton calls us all to contemplation in his book of Contemplative Prayer ...
" ... the most important need in the world today is the inner truth nourished by the Spirit of contemplation -- the praise and love of God, the longing for the coming of Christ, the thirst for the manifestation of God's glory, truth and justice -- the Kingdom of God in the world."