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Richard's Daily Meditations

Sunset Behind Tree, Red by © Shirin McArthur  

DISCOVERING YOUR TRUE SELF
THROUGH PRAYER

“Everything exposed to the light itself becomes light,” says
Ephesians 5:13. In prayer, we merely keep returning the divine gaze and we become its reflection, almost in spite of ourselves (2 Corinthians 3:18). The word “prayer” has often been trivialized by making it into a way of getting what we want. But I use “prayer” as the umbrella word for any interior journeys or practices that allow you to experience faith, hope, and love within yourself. It is not a technique for getting things, a pious exercise that somehow makes God happy, or a requirement for entry into heaven. It is much more like practicing heaven now.

Such prayer, such seeing, takes away your anxiety for figuring it all out fully for yourself, or needing to be right about your formulations. At this point, God becomes more a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more an experience than a dogma, more a personal relationship than an idea. There is Someone dancing with you, and you are not afraid of making mistakes.

From The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, pp. 22-23

Starter Prayer:
Teach me to pray.