posted on the yahoo group today: I don't usually do this, but I think what seemed particularly relevant was the idea that contemplation is something for all christians and not just those with 'vocations': it fits in with where I sort of am. Having just read it through again, there's a lot more here too.

The true Christian must at any cost conquer a place in his life for contemplation. He must firmly refuse to let himself be dragged into a whirlpool of activities in which he is driven incessantly from one task to another, purpose succeeding purpose, without a pause. The present period of perpetual unrest, in which the machine has come to be the model, the causa exemplaris, of well-nigh all things, in which everything is caught in a process of instrumentalization, in which Leistung ("achievement") with the emphasis on quantity and mere technical perfection, has assumed priority over being in a substantial and meaningful sense - this period of shallow hyperactivity is only too apt to drag us into that whirlpool of outward preoccupations.


All our actions, even those with a religious or moral importance, which therefore essentially appeal to the contemplative attitude, we tend to perform in the manner of discharging a duty or of acquitting ourselves of a task - not to say, of turning out the required output. We live in uninterrupted tension, never ceasing to be conquered about what has next to be settled; and many of us no longer know any alternative to work except recreation and amusement.


Dietrich von Hildebrand on Contemplation 1