We werent born yesterday. We are from New York. But we are also from somewhere else. We are from Oz from the Looking-Glass Land from Narnia and from Middle Earth. If with part of ourselves we are men and women of the world and share the sad unbeliefs of the world with a deeper part still the part where our best dreams come from it is as if we were indeed born yesterday or almost yesterday because we are also all of us children still.

In honesty you have to admit to a wise man that prayer is not for the wise not for the prudent not for the sophisticated. Instead it is for those who recognize that in face of their deepest needs all their wisdom is quite helpless. It is for those who are willing to persist in doing something that is both childish and crucial.

If we are a people who pray darkness is apt to be a lot of what our prayers are about. If we are people who do not pray it is apt to be darkness in one form or another that has stopped our mouths.

Whats prayer Its shooting shafts into the dark. What mark they strike if any whos to say Its reaching for a hand you cannot touch. The silence is so fathomless that prayers like plummets vanish into the sea. You beg. You whimper. You load God down with empty praise. You tell him sins that he already knows full well. You seek to change his changeless will. Yet Godric prays the way he breathes for else his heart would wither in his breast. Prayer is the wind that fills his sail. Else drift with witless tides. And sometimes by Gods grace a prayer is heard.