New Seeds of Contemplation

I just received a copy of New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton. It’s a book of Christian contemplation. I’m already blown away. It’s some of the best spiritual writing I’ve ever come across. This is what draws me into the Catholic tradition. Here’s a passage that especially resonated:

… contemplation reaches out to the knowledge and even to the experience of the transcendent and inexpressible God. It knows God by seeming to touch HIm. Or rather it knows Him as if it had been invisibly touched by Him… Touched by Him Who has no hands, but Who is pure Reality and the source of all that is real! Hence contemplation is a sudden gift of awareness, an awakening to the Real within all that is real. A vivid awareness of infinite Being at the roots of our own limited being. An awareness of our contigent reality as received, as a present from God, as a free gift of love. This is the existential contact of which we speak when we use the metaphor of being “touched by God.”

If you’re at all interested in Christian meditation or contemplation, this book is a must-read.