Prayer, is waking up to the presence of God no matter where I am or what I am doing.- Brother David (178)
I am in prayer when I stand in wonder at the red tail hawk flying over head.
I am in prayer when I prepare a meal to share with my brother & wife and kids.
I am in prayer when I dig in the earth preparing to plant.
Waiting is a kind of prayer. (183)
"While I pray daily to be delivered from the most awful things that can happen to human beings - land mines, wasting illness, killing poverty, civil war - I give thanks for even the semi-terrible things that have happened to me, since they have shown me what is really real. They have made me tell the truth. They have quashed all my illusions of control, leaving me with no alternative but to receive my life as an unmitigated gift.
In the same way that I am willing to thank my husband for a gift even before I have opened it - because I know him, because I trust his love of me, because I have faith we will survive even if he has given me a pneumatic nail gun for my birthday - I am willing to thank God for my life even before I know how it turns out.
This is brave talk, I know, while I can still pay the bills, walk without assistance, and talk someone into going to the movies with me. My hope is that if I can practice saying thank you now, when I still approve of most of what is happening to me, then perhaps that practice will have become habit by the time I do not like muck of anything that is happening to me. The plan is to replace approval with gratitude. The plan is to take what is as God's ongoing answer to me." (184)
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