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.
Grace is what happens when openness to chance yields a deeper awareness of the cosmos or one’s place in it . . . when luck leads to spiritual insight . . . Proust called chance experiences "earth experience of grace."