Breath animates the clay of our being. It is the lusty cry of the newborn, and the essence of wind, spirit, muse, sound...Everything "breathes." Think of the woods on a spring day, the sussuration of leaves, the rippling grasses, the trembling of dappled light.
To live a contemplative life is to be open enough to see, free enough to hear, real enough to respond. It is a life, and so it has its own rhythms of darkness, of dying-rising. Simply enough, it is a live of grateful receptivity, or wordless awe, of silent simplicity.