The Natural Sequence Of Things

I have no interest in trying to convince anyone of anything regarding the connection between contemplation, contemplative prayer, or contemplative living and the direct experience of God in any of its forms. It is a fact that throughout history there are infinitely more people 'of faith' in the church who accept this connection without quite seeing how this is even possible, let alone who have stepped out and tried to discern experientially how the one feeds into the other. In the end it is not something that they can relate to. It might at best arouse a curious malaise. It certainly does not appeal to their sense of the need to be in control. And if in the past they did accept it based upon the authority of others, then today the more gracious of them at least tend to justify it on pragmatic grounds, i.e. that contemplatives are somehow gainfully employed, and are invisibly getting things done, and not idle, or lazy or evasive. But the truth is that by surrendering oneself fully, by opening oneself in like manner to the historic dealings of God with people, there arises the possibility of harmonizing one's life in the same manner as did the prophets, receptive to the simple end of encounter. Like birth and death, it's the most natural of sequences. And like birth and death no one gets paid for any of it...no accolades are handed out for being born or for dying. But for some it becomes enough to simply be a part of this natural sequence of things.