Contemplation: it’s a word that both thrills and intimidates. We fear that we don’t really know what it is, and that even if we did we’d find it very difficult to do. This sense is heightened by hearing that contemplation is the heart of happiness in the next life. Whatever that is, we find ourselves thinking, it seems far beyond our capability right now.

But if Josef Pieper, and a wise tradition he represents, is correct in his assessment, then a basic yet crucial form of contemplation can be right at hand for us. What Pieper calls ‘earthly contemplation’ has different forms or levels, some more accessible than we realize.

Any form of contemplation must has a few features. According to Pieper’s account, three stand out.
First, while our bodily senses have a crucial role, contemplation is essentially a form of ‘seeing’ or gazing with our intellect. This gazing is not at some practical problem but rather at something simply worth looking at.
Second, this seeing or gazing springs from love. If we don’t truly love what we see, then our gazing at it is not called ‘contemplation.’
Third, (and this can indeed be somewhat intimidating) this gaze goes deeper, inasmuch as it approaches the inner core of what is seen. And this implies two things: we grasp something of the real goodness of things, and our gaze at least begins to reach the divine.

Now right off the bat one might ask: how can someone else tell us what we will see when we look? Perhaps Pieper is initiating a kind of confirmation bias in how we look at things. This objection points to something very important. According to the wise, key to our being ‘successful’ in our contemplation is that we be students or disciples of those who have already done it. In all arts, such as carpentry or goldsmithing, integral to the master teaching the apprentice is showing him what success looks like. Pieper then is actually setting us up for success, making us more capable of seeing what is there.

This makes sense: those who have really seen can help the rest of us know what to look for. It also helps us recognize what is there when we come upon it.

I find Pieper’s third point nothing short of exhilarating. Starting with countless simple things in the world around us, if we really look, we can come to see, at least a little bit more, just how good things are and that God Himself is somehow within them.

Here then is a simple exercise that any of us can do. It can be a humble beginning of a habit of ‘earthly contemplation’ in our daily life.
1. Go for a walk or sit outside, or look out a window.
2. Relax. While gathering your energy to focus, tell yourself that you are engaging in something you were made to do. This is within your power, while it is also a gratuitous gift offered to you. Prayer for divine assistance is very much in order.
3. Look at something of your choice (I think a tree is especially well suited for this, in part because it never runs away! Or, a bird, a cloud, the sky, the moon, the stars, a field, a mountain, a stream…) and try simply to see and appreciate what is there—apart from any practical purposes.

Simply to do this is already to do a great thing, regardless of exactly ‘how it goes.’ (Indeed, how can it go wrong!) We are nurturing a side of us, a key aspect of our own nature, that is often crusted over or brushed aside by what appears as more pressing.

Here is a further suggestion. As we gaze—at once with our eyes and our mind—we will probably notice many visual details (perhaps that we never noticed before) of our object. This is great. Now while there is no real right and wrong regarding just what we do next, this might be helpful: try to appreciate the wonderful details while remaining open to pass through, or see through them. Consider how when looking at a human face we should notice details, but not let a focus on particular features keep us from taking in the whole.

Passing through, or seeing through the details might take the form of wondering, as we gaze, how this beautiful thing, with all its various features, is part of something larger. Does it belong in a story of some sort? What is its place, and what does it tell us about that bigger story?

Again, our effort to be docile to reality, really to notice what is there, cannot but have real fruits. If nothing else, by baby steps we cultivate a more contemplative disposition.

Important caveat: in suggesting this exercise I do not imply this is the most important kind of contemplation. Indeed, there is a more important contemplation that pertains directly to our prayer life, which here I do not address. I do assert, however, that the practice suggested here can be a natural preparation for that higher contemplation, as well as a fitting consequence or counterpart to it.

I end with a few words from Pieper’s great book Happiness and Contemplation:
“We need to know that the high appreciation accorded for so long to contemplation has every right to be accorded to a good many experiences which come our way in the course of everyday life. And we also need to know that we have a right to take the blessings of such experiences for what they truly are: foretaste and beginning of the perfect joy.” ~ ~ ~

LATEST PODCAST! WINTER: SLOWING DOWN THE PACE OF LIFE. Winter is a clarion call to slow down and look inside—our homes and our hearts. Join Sofia and me in discussing how to make this winter a time of coming home and discovering the deeper richness we long for.  Please check out and share our podcasts HERE, on youtube and wherever you get your podcasts.

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John Cuddeback

Husband, father, and professor of Philosophy. LifeCraft springs from one conviction: there is an ancient wisdom about how to live the good life in our homes, with our families; and it is worth our time to hearken to it. Let’s rediscover it together. Learn more.