The divine mystery is not a collection of problems. As the mystics keep chanting, it is a light so bright that it blinds us, that we are bound to experience it as darkness. To become intimate with it, we have to "unknow" worldly knowledge. We have to give up our tendency to assault it as we would a problem, learning to wait patiently for it to reveal itself as an intimate, at times even shy and vulnerable, lover. . . . The mystery never fails to nourish and heal me. I know that my spirit has been made to contemplate it, to love it as the central reality and treasure of my being. It is my lever for moving the world.
Every artistic creation is an attempt to recover something of the original sense of order, of right proportion. Our capacity for wonder, for awe, our sense of the magical and the sacred, has its source here—in what we can call a state of grace, equilibrium. I suppose that what we refer to as sacred is so because of some primal relation between ourselves and the world. We feel that a part of our being is hallowed or blessed by this, that some acts of ours enhance this feeling, while others violate it.