I was walking in the open air on a beautiful spring morning. The wheat was growing green, the birds were singing, the dew was sparkling, the smoke rising; a transfiguring light lay over everything; this was only a tiny fragment of Earth – and yet the idea seemed to me not only beautiful, but also so true and obvious that she was an Angel – an Angel so sumptuous, so fresh, so like a flower and at the same time so firm and so composed, who was moving through the sky.
"Contemplating is receiving." (St. John of the Cross) What we receive in prayer is the Spirit, who makes all creation new, moment by moment. It is the Spirit who rebirths us within the caves of our hearts. The case is a metaphor for this silent withdrawal, this going away to be alone, to listen, to gestate the Spirit, to rebirth ourselves. The reborn self is the child of wisdom born in solitude.