The central theme in all these prayerful activities is the perception that the world of nature praises God constantly in every one of its processes. The growth and flowering of its plants, the singing and soaring of the birds, the bowing of its trees in the wind — all these things bear witness to a creator who has left evidence of personal authorship and active love in every being and event. Nature is the world as God designed it, while the politics, planning for tomorrow, and economic strife of the conventional world represents God's world as distorted by our petty and short-sighted egos. The world is the perfect cathedral for ecstatic contemplation when we can see it as it is in itself.
— John Ryan Haule, The Ecstasies of St. Francis