The Great Mystery.

'"I don’t pretend to understand this great mystery in which we participate.  Whether we call it life, cosmos, creation, Allah, God, or some other grand name, no label is large enough. I merely try to learn as much about it as I can, during my brief time under the sun. So I study what the most perceptive of our ancestors have discovered - artists and scientists as well as spiritual seekers.  I turn outward to nature and to human artifacts, and inward to the images and voices that arise in silence.  The louder the world becomes, with its relentless demands and messages, the more precious silence becomes. I can’t prove that what emerges within me arises from a source beyond the boundaries of my own skin, but I believe this is so. Simone Weil wrote that 'Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer'. What I pay attention to might be my breath, a sentence in a book, a butterfly on a zinnia blossom, my granddaughter’s face, a skein of music or a skein of geese. I may do my seeking outdoors or indoors, alone or in company, but always the goal is the same: to deepen my awareness of this encompassing mystery."

-Scott Russell Sanders, in "The Spirituality of Nature," Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 2013