Every time I arrange fresh flowers, I choose the blossoms from my garden and the vase from my shelf so that color and form complement each other. Four days later, I see the vermilion rose is developing a silver sheen that would be enhanced in pewter. I choose a new vase; I honor the aging; I create a new form. Just as order and beauty are crucial to a floral arrangement, so order and beauty are necessary for the well-being of my soul. They mirror each other.
The meaning of the contemplative life -- of all spiritual life -- is love. Love is at once the origin, the means, and the goal of human spirituality, and when seen through spiritual eyes, the meaning of life in its entirety is love. God's love is endless, boundless without qualifications. Love must create, and we human beings and all the rest of creation are continually born in and from God's love. Creation brings forth diversity and separation. This permits a sense of "me and you," "I and thou," lover and beloved. In other words, we are created as unique individuals so that we may love God and one another. Love is the reason for our being. In our individuality and separateness, each of us is given a longing for re-union, a yearning for the greater fulfillment of love. In the endless movements of love, there is delicate beauty, majestic power, unbearable joy and considerable pain -- and freedom.