I’ve been using the terms meditation and contemplation interchangeably, but there is a distinction, perhaps best described by the sixteenth-century mystic Saint John of the Cross: “The difference between these two conditions of the soul is like the difference between working, and enjoyment of the fruit of our work; between receiving a gift, and profiting by it; between the toil of travelling and the rest of our journey’s end; between the preparation of our food and the eating and enjoyment of it.”
