“All I bring to the darkness each night is what the Cloud author calls a “naked intent,” a wish to be empty and still in the presence of that for which I have no name. The author of the Cloud says that if you find this unexplainable desire welling up within you, simply wanting time without speech with one that you love, then you may have to start thinking about yourself as a “contemplative.” You unavoidably start seeking out people who know more of this simplicity and emptiness, who voluntarily (or involuntarily) practice a life of poverty, stripped of the complicated agendas that bind the rest of us so easily. You discover a stubborn, irrepressible desire for the poor, the marginal, and fugitive as your finest teachers.”
–Belden Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, p. 146
