prayer happens

 

Prayer is something that happens to you (Romans 8:26-27), 

much more than anything you privately do.

 It is an allowing of the Big Self 

more than an assertion of the small self.

 Eventually you will find yourself preferring to say,

 “Prayer happened, and I was there”

 more than “I prayed today.” 

All you know is that you are being led, 

being guided, being loved, being used,

 being prayed through—

and you are no longer in the driver’s seat.

God stops being an object of attention

 like any other object in the world,

 and becomes at some level your own “I am.” 

You start knowing through,

 with, and in Somebody Else.

Your little “I Am” becomes “We Are.”

Please trust me on this. 

It might be the most important thing I could tell you.

~ Richard Rohr

from The Naked Now

art by Debra Nangala McDonald

with thanks to love is a place