And what is it to love God? To love God is to pay attention without distraction. God is attention without distraction. And so, our contemplation, our contemplative practice, is already a movement into the state of divine union in love, and it is by love that this union takes place. The Christian tradition has always said that contemplation is essentially a work of love, not the work of the intellect by itself, but a work of love that involves the heart above all, but the whole person. By waiting humbly, Simone Weil says, we are made similar to God. In this process, if we are beginning to do this work of contemplation, you can see then that a big change is already happening, change in the way we face our lives and interpret our lives and interact with real conditions of daily life.
(The Art of Waiting by Laurence Freeman OSB)
