One of the things he liked most about the hermitage was the silence. "Silence is my music now." He could pick up the small sounds of insects and animals. Sometimes when the wind was strong, it blew the sound of the traffic to him. He liked to think of all the people going on with their lives and to think of himself as in a sense staying where he was for their sakes, "like a lighthouse keeper."
~ from "The Music of Silence" by Phyllis Rose in Atlantic Monthly" - Oct. 1997
A BLESSED NEW YEAR, dear friends, as we enter our sixteenth year of radiating SILENCE out to the world. In these troubling times, may the depth of our silence be a PRAYER FOR PEACE over all the Earth. Each prayer is a seed planted with hope.
I think that prayer is participation; it is the spirit of life praying in you, and when you connect with that, your deepest longing connects with the longings of the universe unfolding. You know, prayer can come out in a form of deep longing or concern for a person or for a situation in the world, or for someone who has died, or for my own health. Yet, it is a deeper longing than anything the ego wants.
~ by Danny Martin in "Sacred Journey" -- April 1998
Prayer is a response to God and to live coming from a heart that has been touched. How does a heart touched by God pray? Sometimes in pure gratitude it simply stands in awe rejoicing. And that is prayer! Sometimes it weeps. Sometimes it sings. At times it talks tenderly to God. At other times it might scream out in anger and pain. Sometimes it looks on the world with love, or rushes out to do good deeds. Sometimes it kneels without-stretched arms. Sometimes it merely yearns for God in deep, holy silence. All this is prayer.
As we grow in the way of prayer, we begin to know that true prayer is an aware openness to the working of Love, that we may play our part in transmitting the divine love to all whom we meet in the daily round. Prayer is universal in scope, for God has no favorites. The way of communicative silence is the most effective way of knowing God and serving our brothers and sisters... I have little doubt that we will appreciate the silence when the body is dead and the soul passes forth into new surroundings for fresh adventures.
Even when we bring the most difficult situations into prayer, the pain and resistance are in the situations, not in the prayer itself, as prayer is always true to itself. It discloses its own nature — that of a door a passageway to the Great Life of God. Prayer does not hold dismay, even though whatever we pray about may, for prayer move us off the place where we find ourselves and ushers us along — closer, at least — to the place we long to be.
PRAYER is our instinctive response to the immediate experience of the OTHER within, a phenomenon arising from our compelling need to relate to this being who seeks us out, forgives, accepts, and offers love.
Prayer is action you take in order to realize yourself fully with your neighbor and with God. It is the fulfillment of the great commandment to love God and neighbor. It opens the gate to heaven; heaven is the complete recognition of your potential to be who you really are, uniting you in pain and joy with God and with the whole world. Embracing your own alienation and brokenness with honesty and openness is the foundation of prayer; prayer can be choked off by self-will. Prayer is anything you think, say, do, or feel that opens you up and out to love.
