A contemplative living is a life of seeing: seeing through the surface and seeing beyond the reality. In life, it requires seeing. The more I read books written by those who practice solitude, the more I am drawn to this kind of living. I don't mean that I want to live in a remote place where I see no one but Jesus (Mk. 9:8). However, I want to be in touch with reality and yet live, play, eat, and see things differently. It's not that I want to glorify and magnify God in every single moment. I wish I have that desire, but I don't. But I do want to know that God always seeks Himself in me.
Thomas Merton wrote a letter to Dom Francis Decroix on August 21, 1967:
"God is not a 'problem' and we who live the contemplative life have learned by experience that one cannot know God as long as one seeks to solve 'the problem of God.' To seek to solve the problem of God is to seek to see one's own eyes. One cannot see his own eyes because they are that with which he sees and God is the light by which we see--by which we see not a clearly defined 'object' called God, but everything else in the invisible One. God is then the Seer and the Seeing, but in earth He is not seen. In heaven, He is the Seer, the Seeing and the Seen. God seeks Himself in us...But indeed we exist solely for this, to be the place He has chosen for His presence, His manifestation in the world, His epiphany" (William H. Shannon and Christine M. Bochen (editors), Thomas Merton: A Life in Letters, The Essential Collection (Ave Maria Press, 2008), pp. 166-167.).
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