When the Trees Say Nothing: Writings on Nature

by Thomas Merton

Beauty of the sunlight falling on a tall vase of red and white carnations and green leaves on the altar in the novitiate chapel. The light and shade of the red, especially the darkness in the fresh crinkled flower and the light warm red around the darkness, the same color as blood but not “red as blood,” utterly unlike blood. Red as a carnation. This flower, this light, this moment, this silence = Dominus est [the Lord is here], eternity! Best because the flower is itself and the light is itself and the silence is itself and I am myself—all, perhaps, an illusion but no matter, for illusion is nevertheless shadow of reality and reality is the grace that under lays these lights, these colors, and this silence.