The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestation of the profoundest reasons and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms. It is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, I am a deeply religious man.
Out here in the woods I can think of nothing except God. It is not so much that I think of [God] as I am aware of [God] as I am of the sun and the clouds and the blue sky and the thin cedar trees...engulfed in the simple and lucid actuality of the afternoon — I mean God's afternoon — this sacramental moment of time when the shadows will get longer and longer and one small bird sings quietly in the cedars, one car goes by in the remote distance, and the oak leaves move in the wind.
High up in the summer sky I watch the silent flight of a vulture, and the day goes by in prayer. This solitude confirms my call to solitude. The more I'm in it, the more I love it.