We need to sit still, let our emptiness remain empty, and wait patiently. If we fill the foreground with busy questions, reasons or proposed actions, we will miss the God who is the silent, yet ever present horizon of the world.
~ from All the Days of My Life by Marv and Nancy Hiles
We are -- all of us -- contemplatives in the root and ground of our being. For at the root of our being, we are one with God, one with one another, one with the world in which we live. Spending time in prayer is not a means of achieving oneness, but of recognizing that it is there. Prayer does not make us contemplatives; rather it can make us aware that we truly are contemplatives, but at a level of perception we do not often achieve. Prayer, silence and solitude are moments of grace that can awaken us to the contemplative side of our being.