At the empty nest turning point of middle age, something arose in me, and my journal became full of entries about being alone. I discovered that two entries written 10 years apart were almost identical. I had not yet learned to dignify "alone" with the name of Solitude, but I knew what I wanted, what I needed—as if my life was depriving me of something as essential as the air I breathed.
Creation has been given to us as a clean window through which the light of God could shine into the human soul. Sun and moon, night and day, rain, sea, crops, the flowering tree: all these things are transparent.
~ by Thomas Merton in "Horizons" thanks to Nancy Conley
