The coyote howling in the night calls for God and so does the hooting owl.  The gentle dove coos for God and does not know it.  The little calf mooing for its mother is also calling God, as is the lion who roars and the croaking frogs.  All creation calls God, in all its many languages.  Lovers and poets as well as monks in prayer also cry to God.

All human eyes have longing in them.  People of all races, children, the old, mothers, women in love, police officers, workers, adventurers, murderers, revolutionaries, dictators, and saints all have the same light of longing, the same deep fire, the same infinite desire for happiness and joy without end.  Human eyes are like wells, like the well of the Samaritan woman.

Every woman is a woman at the well.  The well is deep.  And Jesus is sitting on the rim of the well.

“And the woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep…’

“Jesus said to her, ‘Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever ‘drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst, the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’

“The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst.’”

This thirst felt by all beings is the love of God.

For this love’s sake, all crimes are committed, all wars are fought, and all people love or hate each other.  For this love’s sake human beings climb mountains, go down to the ocean bed; they rule and plot, build and write, sing and cry and love.  Every human action, even sin, is a search for God.  But sometimes God is sought where God cannot be found.  Thus St. Augustine: “Week what you seek but not where you seek it.”  For what we seek in orgies, at parties, on journeys, in movie theaters and bars is simply God, who is all the time only to be found within ourselves.

Within every one of us there is the same cry and the same thirst.  So the psalmist writes, “As the deer thirsts for running waters, so longs my soul, O God, for thee.”  God’s arrow has pierced every heart.

The dictator’s lust for power, money, and property is the love of God.  The lover finding her way to the house of her beloved, the explorer, the business executive, the agitator, the artist, and the contemplative monk are all looking for the same thing: heaven.

God is everyone’s homeland.  For God alone we are homesick.  From every creature God calls us. We hear that call deep within us, as the lark hears its mate calling at daybreak, or Juliet hears Romeo whispering beneath her balcony.

Evening and night are quiet and solitary because God made them for contemplation.  Woods, deserts, the sea, and the starry sky were made for contemplation.  Indeed, for this the world was made.

Magpies and fishes speak of God, and it is God who taught them their language.  The bird chorus in the early morning sings to God.  Volcanoes, clouds, and trees shout about God.  All creation proclaims with a loud voice the existence, the beauty, and the love of God.  Music sings this message in our ears, as the beautiful countryside communicates it to our eyes.

“I find letters from God dropped in the street and every one of them is signed by him,” says Walt Whitman.  And the green grass is a fragrant handkerchief with God’s initials on the corner, as Whitman says, God dropped it on purpose to remind us of him.  That is how the saints see nature, and how Adam saw it in Eden (and how poets and artists also see it, at least some of the time).

God’s signature is on the whole of nature.  All creatures are love letters from God to us.  They are outbursts of love.  The whole of nature is bursting with love, set in it by God, who is love, to kindle the fire of love in us.  All things have no other reason for existing, no other meaning.  They can give us no satisfaction or pleasant beyond this, to stir in us the love of God.

Nature is like God’s shadow, reflecting God’s beauty and splendor.  The quiet blue lake has the splendor of God.  God’s fingerprints are upon every particle of matter.  In every atom is an image of the Trinity, the figures of the triune God.  That is why God’s creation so fills us with enthusiasm.

As the kingfisher was made to fish and the humming bird to suck nectar from flowers, so we were made for contemplation and the love of God.

God is everywhere, not just within us.  But God is also within us, and we have felt God’s presence and desired it and that is why we withdraw into silence and solitude.  For the time being we want no other creature to impress us, only God.  As the lake reflects the sky when it is calm, we find God’s reflection best in solitude and peace.  We have only to be quiet and purified for God’s face to show.  And God’s face is the Human One, whose face was printed on Veronica’s veil.  And God’s face can be seen, though less clearly, in all creation.

We are mirrors of God, created to reflect God.  Even when the water is disturbed, it still reflects the sky.
.