This is Prayer!

by Thomas Merton

When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest.

When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you, tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God.

But when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real and blazes transparently with the Reality of God: for now I know that the Creation which first seems to reveal Him, in concepts, then seems to hide Him, by the same concepts, finally is revealed in Him, in the Holy Spirit: and we who are in God find ourselves united, in Him, with all that springs from Him. This is prayer, and this is glory.


Taken from The Sign of Jonas by Thomas Merton (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1953).