During the summer of 1973, we were on holiday in Bavaria. I was six years old. It was a wonderful holiday, filled with visits to fairy-tale castles, Baroque monasteries    , rides in a chair-lift up to high Alpine pastures; milk fresh from the cows whose bells we heard clanging around us as we supped away. There was swimming and boating in glacial lakes. It was a memorable holiday filled with new wonders.

            On one of those day-trips, on the way back we stopped in the evening at the Weiskirche. (You can take a virtual tour of it here: http://www.wieskirche.de/eframset.htm ) Its architecture is baroque, and really not to my taste at all, but back then I didn’t really have a taste, just open eyes. As we arrived at the church, the sun was setting, and my abiding memory is of white walls illuminated by the sunset and the rows of candles lit by pilgrims. There was much gold-leaf finery in this church, but my memory is of the white walls reddened and goldened by the glow of sun and candles. It was, and remains for me, a moment of Heaven in which my whole being was transfigured.

            What I have described is essentially an encounter with the numinous, that sense that reality is suffused, shot-through, with beauty, joy, and perhaps even divinity. The late Christopher Hitchens said: "Everybody has had the experience at some point when they feel that there's more to life than just matter." (Notice he said “feel” and not “know” – that’s an important distinction.)

            The experience of candle and sun-light in that Bavarian church has never left me, and it is a memory that I continue to treasure. I have spent the months since Epiphany trying to notice and be attentive to the beauty that is all around us. The world is incredibly beautiful. I don’t say that proves the existence of divinity or the supernatural; it certainly doesn’t. But we are incredibly privileged to be here with minds that can be attentive and take notice of it. Contemplation is just looking; looking and seeing; hearing and listening; breathing and sensing fragrances.