The Spirit of God is a life that bestows life, root of world-tree and the wind in its boughs. Scrubbing out sin, she rubs oil into wounds. She is glistening life alluring all praise, all-awakening, all-resurrecting.
Prayer is that divine seed whose roots draw food from earthly existence. Like the lotus flower that does not bloom in arable ground but in marshes, prayer thrusts its roots into human misery as if into mud. But the lotus flower does not show any trace of the muddy water from which it drew life; turned toward the sky, it blooms.
~ from AWAKENING TO PRAYER by Augustine Ichiro Okumura
