The key reason the Contemplative Core Team advocates Centering Prayer and other forms of contemplation is because they allow us to know God heart-to-heart – the only way God can even begin to be truly known! Nevertheless, although no words can fully capture the truth of God, poetry and other works of art can give expression to the Truth that only the heart can really know. In that spirit, we offer you this poem by Thomas Merton, and encourage you to find your own way to express your relationship with the Divine.
Today, Father, this blue sky lauds you. The delicate green and orange flowers of the tulip poplar tree praise you. The distant blue hills praise you, together with the sweet-smelling air that is full of brilliant light. The bickering flycatchers praise you with the lowing cattle and the quails that whistle over there. I too, Father, praise you, with all these my brothers, and they give voice to my own heart and to my own silence. We are all one silence, and a diversity of voices. You have made us together, you have made us one and many, you have placed me here in the midst as witness, as awareness, and as joy. Here I am. In me the world is present, and you are present. I am a link in the chain of light and of presence. You have made me a kind of center, but a center that is nowhere. And yet also I am "here." -Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, pp. 131-132