Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the transformative power of prayer and gratitude in creating an inner sense of peace and connection with the divine.
Richard Rohr's quote illustrates how engaging in prayer can lead one to a state of silence and stillness, allowing for deeper reflection and connection with the divine. It suggests that through consistent practice of gratitude and praise, individuals can transform their own lives to become embodiments of those virtues, thus deepening their relationship with God and enhancing their spiritual wellbeing.
In practice
In a church service to emphasize the importance of prayer.
My scientist friends have come up with things like 'principles of uncertainty' and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of 'faith'! How strange that the very word 'faith' has come to mean its exact opposite.
The gift of darkness draws you to know God’s presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend.
I cannot illustrate huge differences between male and female spiritualities except in their starting points, style and fascinations along the way. This is significant, however, and has huge pastoral implications: men must be challenged in the world of doing; women must be challenged in the world of relating.
Much of the Christian religion has largely become “holding on” instead of letting go. But God, it seems to me, does the holding on (to us!), and we must learn the letting go (of everything else).
We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
I've had the good fortune of teaching and preaching across much of the globe, while also struggling to make sense of my experience in my own tiny world.
A beginner must look on himself as one setting out to make a garden for his Lord's pleasure, on most unfruitful soil which abounds in weeds. His Majesty roots up the weeds and will put in good plants instead. Let us reckon that this is already done when the soul decides to practice prayer and has begun to do so.
If you are hungry to hear the voice of God, you will hear. To hear, you have to cut out all other things.
The lasting value of our public service for God is measured by the depth of the intimacy of our private times of fellowship and oneness with Him.
Prayer begins by talking to God, but it ends by listening to Him. In the face of Absolute Truth, silence is the soul's language.
Prayer does not mean that I am to bring God down to my thoughts and my purposes, and bend his government according to my foolish, silly, and sometimes sinful notions. Prayer means that I am to be raised up into feeling, into union and design with him; that I am to enter into his counsel and carry out his purpose fully.
When prayer fades out, power fades out. We are as spiritual as we are prayerful; no more, no less.
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