Meditation begins and ends in faith. It expresses the unity of all in the spirit, as do indeed all sacred acts inspired by love or compassion. Meditation as we can testify creates community experienced in the deep silence of being together. What silence makes happen is the transformation of consciousness and the emergence of a catholic mind, because catholic knows no boundaries and seeks to integrate all.
After Meditation: An excerpt from “Ghosts” by Mary Oliver in DEVOTIONS: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (New York: Penguin, 2017), p. 375.
7.
Once only, and then in a dream,
I watched while, secretly
and with the tenderness of any caring woman,
a cow gave birth
to a red calf, tongued him dry and nursed him
in a warm corner
of the clear night
in the fragrant grass
in the wild domains
of the prairie spring, and I asked them,
in my dream I knelt down and asked them
to make room for me.
