One of the fascinating things to ask about prayer is, What do you pray with? Put more tenderly: What is it that prays within you? If prayer is but the voice of the superficial mind, the result is endless inner chatter. Prayer goes deeper. More precisely: prayer issues from an eternal well within you. The presence that prays within you is your soul. It is interesting to read in the New Testament that the soul is always seen as a continuation of the Holy Spirit. No place does it ever say that we should pray to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not different from the activity of your prayer. You pray in the Holy Spirit. The little preposition suggests how you are suffused with the Holy Spirit. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and the deepest level in you is spirit.
One of the deepest longings in the human heart is the longing for a foundation to things. Because we sense how fragile and uncertain life can be, we long for a foundation that nothing can shake. The first stage in building a house is to dig out the foundation. If the house were simply built on surface ground, the walls would crack and come away from each other. Yet the irony is that we never penetrate past the surface layer. Being on earth, we feel we are on solid ground. Yet at its deepest foundation, the earth rests again on the nothingness of the empty air—but it is held there by the invisible force fields of gravity. In the inner world, the deepest foundation of the mind and the heart also rests on the invisible nothingness of the soul. The roots of all intimacy and belonging are planted powerfully in the invisible spirit. You belong ultimately to a presence that you cannot see, touch, grasp, or measure.
When you forget or repress the truth and depth of your invisible belonging and decide to belong to some system, person, or project, you short-circuit your longing and squander your identity. To have true integrity, poise, and courage is to be attuned to the silent and invisible nature within you. Real maturity is the integrity of inhabiting that “immortal longing” that always calls you to new horizons. Your true longing is to belong to the eternal that echoes continually in everything that happens to you. Real power has nothing to do with force, control, status, or money. Real power is the persistent courage to be at ease with the unsolved and the unfinished. To be able to recognize, in the scattered graffiti of your desires, the signature of the eternal. True prayer in the Holy Spirit keeps the graciousness and splendour of that vulnerability open.
Prayer is the art of presence. Where there is no wonder there is little depth of presence. The sense of wonder is one of the key sources of prayer. Wonder at the adventure of being here is one of the special qualities of humans. Plato said, “All thought begins in wonder.” Even our older sisters and brothers, the animals, often seem to be enthralled in silent wonder at creation. Sometimes in humans profound wonder can only be expressed in silence. Perhaps the huge silence of the animal world is their expression of wonder at creation. It certainly seems that the excitement of being here often overcomes them. Animals at play express pure joy. When you see young foxes tussle and tumble with each other, or a brace of lambs frisk and canter in the spring, you sense the innocent delight of the animal world. Animals often seem so contemplative in their presence. Often, when one goes out to the mountains to herd cattle, one comes upon them grazing slowly on the tough mountain grass. They raise their heads and look lingeringly into the middle distance. That still gaze resembles the human gaze of wonder. At times, they look at us not just with wonder, but in amazement. How strange we must seem to them, so full of talk and trembling restlessness.
Wonder is a beautiful style of perception; when you wonder at something, your mind voyages deep into its possibility and nature. You linger among its presences. You do not take it for granted and are not deceived or blinded by its familiarity. The sense of wonder keeps experience fresh and original. It is lovely to see a relationship that even after years has still retained its wonder. When the person you love still causes you to feel wonder, you are still alive to his or her mystery. Wonder is the child of mystery. It calls your heart to thanks and praise.
