Prayer: not some genii's lamp

Prayer is coming home—to God and to ourselves, to heaven and earth and all that fills them. Prayer is waking up to Life itself. It is opening to grace.

But prayer's been so terribly reduced in our day. For most, it's more like rubbing a Genii's lamp than an encounter with the Beloved, whose aim is the glorious transformation of our lives into the fullness of our humanity, which is also the cradle of Divinity: the God who permeates and pervades all creation, even, or more accurately, especially . . . us.

Curved in upon ourselves

Much of our lives are spent curved in upon ourselves—closed up within, and closed down to the Divine. But there comes a time when each human heart receives an invitation to awaken to the Light that radiates from the Center, Source, and Substance of all things—to open what was once closed, to curve outward in a gesture of receptivity, like a chalice awaiting the wine.

Many of us ignore that this summons to come home; we minimize it, deny it, struggle against it.

When we do, we remain restless— vagabonds wandering this earth, searching and searching but never finding . . . until we awaken to the invitation to come home to the Light manifest in Jesus, who is, astonishingly, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, Love who gives life to all, our eternal Home.

Awakening to prayer

Prayer—conscious, intentional, and in the words of St Paul, “unceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5.12)—is the highest expression of our intellectual, moral, and spiritual life. Prayer, when we are awake to it, is life.

When you consciously and intentionally enter into the prayer that is always going on around and within you, you become spiritually active, free, and more fully aware that you are alive to more than your “self-made me” and its many compulsions, anxieties, and obsessions that keep you curved in upon yourself, fallen into the sin that separates you and contracts you and closes you off from the presence of the Beloved who is always near, and whose prayer is always calling you to the friendship that is prayer.

We exist by prayer as we exist by breathing

Prayer can be and should be as natural as breathing—for we were made to pray just as we were made to breathe. The Bible tells us that in the beginning, God gently lifted the formless clay of the earth, cherished it lovingly, then kissed it and breathed life into it (Genesis 2.7). Prayer then is the experience of this tender intimacy, this reunion with the One who made us and loves us and who sustains us still by the Divine Breath.

Whether we know it or not, we exist by prayer just as we exist by breathing—God’s prayer for us and the prayer of our heart, which is always praying with each and every breath, each and every beating of our heart. Whether we’re mindful or not of this praying doesn’t matter.

Prayer is.

And without prayer—the sacred relationship shared by Creator and creation—things simply would not be.

Prayer is . . .

Prayer is universal.  At all times in history and in all places, people have sought the Divine and uttered some kind of prayer.  Prayer is the yearning of life; it is a desire for the Source, the unending Fountain of life. Prayer not only is this yearning, it is a finding.

In prayer we come home to God, we dwell with and in the One who is life (John 1.4).