Could it be that the joy we pursue in life — whether the joy of playing an instrument or a sport, of chipping a sculpture from stone or building a business from the ground up — is the joy of knowing that there is a silence, a void, a space that waits for us to fill it? And could it be that God, the creator of both us and that void, is the witness, the audience, the Listener for whom we are always performing? And could it be that contemplation is the pause button that freezes time, so that we listen to the Listening and witness the Witness?
— Brian D. McLaren, Naked Spirituality, p. 228