Contemplation is the response to a call

I know I've posted a portion of this reading before from Thomas Merton, but I just keeping coming back to it over and over. Read it slowly, pausing at each line break, and learn from the master of contemplation:

Contemplation is the response to a call:
A call from Him Who has no voice,
and yet
Who speaks in everything that is,
and Who,
most of all,
speaks in the depths of our own being:
for we ourselves are words of His.

But we are words
that are meant to respond to Him,
to answer to Him,
to echo Him,
and even
in some way
to contain Him
and signify Him.

Contemplation is this echo.

It is a deep resonance
in the inmost center of our spirit
in which our very life
loses its separate voice
and re-sounds with the majesty
and the mercy
of the Hidden
and Living One.

He answers Himself in us
and this answer is
divine life,
divine creativity,
making all things new.

We ourselves
become His echo
and His answer.

It is as if
in creating us
God asked a question,
and in awakening us to comtemplation
He answered the question,
so that the contemplative is
at the same time,
question
and answer.

And all is summed up in one awareness -
not a proposition,
but an experience:
"I Am."

- Thomas Merton, A Book of Hours, 48-49.