And now these three remain faith hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

So I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.

If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.

Im selfish impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you cant handle me at my worst then you sure as hell dont deserve me at my best.

I admit at the beginning that popular religion demotic religion the pieties of the common folk tends to sink to the lowest common denominator be it in syncretizing saints with old half-forgotten pagan godlings or in preferring the nasal whine and the revivalist shoutin to solid sense and learning regarding intellect as positively inimical to the workings of the Holy Ghost. But it is in American religious life especially Protestant American religious life that things bottom out completely.

Strange is it not how even those of us who scoff at divine intervention will fall to our knees and clasp our hands the moment we realize our futures are defined by uncertainty and hazard. A thoughtful man would never leave his knees. A wise man would never drop to them. In any case it wasnt really a prayer but one does like to follow convention now and then.

I beseech Christ for this one thing only that He will enable me to endure all things courageously and that He break me as a potters vessel or make me strong as it pleases Him.

There is a value in repetition. When we repeat certain phrases and even actions like fingering prayer beads we create a quiet rhythm within our spirits. The beating of our heart is a repetition as is the rhythm of our breathing. All of life has its rhythms and the repetition of familiar prayers can bring our interior spirits into harmony with the Divine Heartbeat and the breathing of the Divine Christ.

Regarding Jabezs Prayer I will say at once that I am a very poor Christian and indeed a bad man. My besetting sins are many and the least of them are the fleshlier ones the really deadly ones are pride and intellectual arrogance. But I can honestly say I have never sunk to confusing prayer the souls colloquy with the Creator mortal mans dialogue with the Deity with magical incantation and the ritual of the spell.

I was Baptist and had always prayed in a damp squint for things not to happen. Sils was a Catholic and so she prayed for things to happen for things to come true. She prayed for love here and now. I prayed for no guns.