In authentic contemplation, we discover within ourselves the hidden living and loving Companion Presence. We need to go to the solitude and silence of the wilderness, where God calls us by name, to a deeper place. This is where we are filled with the peace that the world cannot give and which the world cannot take from us. We discover there that we have and always shall be in God. It is the spacious place of the soul. To live there is finally to be at home. God is also at home there, and when we return, we have discovered simplicity.
In the frozen fields of my life
there are no shortcuts to spring,
but stories of great birds in migration
carrying small ones on their backs,
predators flying next to warblers
they would, in a different season, eat.
Stunned by the astonishing mix in this uneasy world
that plunges in a single day from despair
to hope and back again, I commend my life
to Ruskin's difficult duty of delight,
and to that most beautiful form of courage,
to be happy.