In Presence

What is it that makes a prayer more than a mere string of words? Active imagination, not fantasy or imagery but imagination of the heart.

The source word for imagination is mago, magic. When it resides in the heart, imagination is aspiration, lifting, reaching up, joyous, subtle intimacy. Breathing in.

When first exploring prayer, I thought it was repetition and attention on the words. It has taken years to connect the use of just a very few words with imagination of the heart.

Imagination of the heart lifts me into a realm above the earth, where words are primarily sounds rippling an ocean of sensation and feeling, where prayer is the state of its own fulfillment, a state-shifting, unbounded by time and space.

The prayer itself contains the response we seek.

It can be simple, the act of a heart broken by life, humbled by failure, no longer ambitious, alive to the infinite sufferings of the material world, the indignities of ageing, the contemplation of things lost.

The heart knows this prayer and one day when you are not seeking it, perhaps when you have lapsed into gratitude for the simple act of breathing, it will rise up in you as an inexplicable burst of joy.