The experience of true love is a great mystery in life.  It can change you to an extent you could never have imagined.  Whoever has experienced true love realizes how empty their life had been before and how much more richness their life now contains than they ever could have imagined.  Even the many shallow forms that are called "love" are, nonetheless, a hint of what a person in their inner most longings knows to be the real reason why he or she exists.  Whether it be old folk songs or modern hit tunes, the theme of love is never exhausted because it expresses a deep human need.  How could it be otherwise for the person who has been created by the God whose deepest nature is love?  Indeed, it is "in God's image" that we are created...

- Michelangelo - Creation of Adam (Detail), in connection with Genesis 1:27 (picture and text meditation)

- Select from the materials that are offered week two what appears meaningful and right for you in light of this picture and ponder it... (Perhaps you want to change something in regard to this picture, for example, "to touch and to allow yourself to be touched", instead of "to allow yourself to be looked at and looked through " [see week 2 day 5).

- Read the definition of humankind as it is presented in the first Chapter of the Bible (Gen. 1:27), and apply this message to yourself...

Comment:  If you used this picture before as an option for your meditation then you can pursue the meditation further with this exercise.  Meditation thrives on repetition.

Meditation on a saying:

Angelus Silesius:
„In everyone dwells an image of what one should become;
As long as it is not fulfilled, so long is one's peace not complete.“