" Perhaps the small, elderly brother mutely splitting firewood and stacking it in a buckling, corrugated-iron water tank was heard in Heaven more compellingly than the rest of us put together. Maybe there comes a time when the one who lives to pray at last steps over an invisible threshold and into a place where liturgical form, word and gesture dissolve. Where feeding scraps of stale bread to a young magpie translates into intercession that is as fervent as it is unobserved, as effective as it is inexplicable. "

― , The Abbot's Shoes: Seeking a Contemplative Life