clarity

I was knocked over with a rush of relief and thankfulness at the obvious clarity of the figures, the clarity and fluidity of shape and line, the design of the monumental bodies composed into the rock shape and landscape, figure, rock, and tree. And the sweep of bare rock sloping away on the other side of the hollow, where you can go back and see different aspects of the figures ... I don't know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic illumination ... It says everything; it needs nothing.

-- Thomas Merton The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton