Prayer is the language of the soul. Our natural posture is attentive openness to the Divine.
Walking through the primeval garden that was their home, our first parents were ever alert to the presence of the God who shared their world. Nothing was more ordinary than the extraordinary encounters they regularly had with the divine. Life was prayer. Prayer was life. But listening to the serpent turned everything upside down. Prayer no longer seems natural, and God no longer seems present, so instead of the soul’s normal language of prayer as attentiveness, we create our own prayer dialect.
Prayer is much more than what most of us think of or practice. Offering petitions for self and others is certainly a legitimate and important part of prayer. But petitionary prayer far from exhausts the possibilities of this rich, soul-nourishing contact with God.
In this issue of Conversations Journal 2.1, from Spring 2004, take a deep dive into prayer in all it’s breadth, beauty, and potency.