Some centuries ago Joachim of Flores prophesied that there would be in the future a new age that would be the Age of the Holy Spirit. This is Sophia's age, in which She declares: Omnia coniungo ("I unite all things"). Sophia the God-bearer, becomes the "inner mother to the Divine Child, the incarnating Self within us", enabling us to be born again, through the Spirit, in the world. And in this new world, Sophia helps us to see in the geometrical forms of Nature, the natural shapes of the human soul.
~ from "The Shapes of Sophia: Alice Howell's Geometry of the Soul" by Richard Leviton
A long and loving look at the universe we inhabit can actually change us. We can become different persons.
Prayer with nature is a passionate listening to the beating heart of the world. It is appreciation. And it is always praise.
Let us plant dates, even though those who plant them will never eat them ... We must live by the love of what we will never see. This is the secret discipline. It is a refusal to let the creative act be dissolved away in immediate sense experience, and a stubborn commitment to the future of our grandchildren. Such disciplined love is what has given prophets, revolutionaries and saints the courage to die for the future they envisaged. They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hope.
~ from TOMORROW'S CHILD by Rubem Alves with thanks to Tina Beneman