Dawn Reading for Monday

The forms and individual characters of living and growing things, of inanimate beings, of animals and flowers and all nature, constitute their holiness in the sight of God.

Their inscape is their sanctity.
It is the imprint of His wisdom and His reality in them.

The special clumsy beauty of this particular colt on this day in this field under these clouds is a holiness consecrated to God by His own creative wisdom and it declares the glory of God.


The pale flowers of the dogwood outside this window are saints.

The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints looking up into the face of God.




This leaf has its own texture and its own pattern of veins and its own holy shape,

and the bass and the trout hiding in the deep pools of the river are canonized by their beauty and their strength.


The lakes hidden among the hills are saints,

and the sea too is a saint
who praises God without interruption in her majestive dance.

The great, gashed, half-naked mountain is another of God's saints.
There is no other like him.
He is alone in his own character;
nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God in quite the same way.
That is his sanctity.

But what about you?

What about me?

- Thomas Merton, A Book of Hours, 72-73.