Daily Reading for December 9 • Thomas Merton, Contemplative and Writer, 1968 (transferred)

A door opens in the centre of our being and we seem to fall through it into immense depths which, although they are infinite, are all accessible to us; all eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact. God touches us with a touch that is emptiness and empties us. He moves us with a simplicity that simplifies us. All variety, all complexity, all paradox, all multiplicity cease. Our mind swims in the air of an understanding, a reality that is dark and serene and includes in itself everything. Nothing more is desired . . . you feel as if you were at last fully born.

From Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton (Dell, 1949).