Being a prayer….
The very distinguished older gentleman looked at me as we walked down the stairs into the undercroft of the church. “Do you think,” he said, “that a person can be a prayer?”
I was startled – no one had ever asked me that question. There was simply no way this parishioner could have known that this was how I had described my contemplative prayer times to my spiritual director. I once had told her that the effort to lose myself in God was like becoming prayer. His question embarrassed me; it felt as though someone had seen into my heart and exposed something very private and personal between God and me.
And then I had one of those “Aha!” moments. The question itself was proof that the idea of becoming prayer was not as private and personal a thing as I’d thought. The very question reminded me that I was not alone.
Of course I am not alone – how perfectly silly to think that I might be. We all “live and move and have our being” in God. We all bend and flow and move together in that extravagantly life-giving Presence, breathing in the air of sanctity that others breathe out. We share in the depths of our beings the existence of God within. We dwell in the environment of God’s life with all of creation. What touches each of us touches the other. We allare in the process of becoming prayer, as we live more deeply into God.
My friend – not only can we be a prayer; we aremeant to be prayer. Thanks be to God.
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