I remember when I used to dismiss the bumper sticker "PRAY FOR PEACE". I realize now that I did not understand it, since I also did not understand prayer, which I now know to be the active affirmation in the physical world of our inseparableness from the divine; and everything, especially the physical world, is divine. War will stop when we no longer praise it, or give it any attention at all. Peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited. Love will overflow every sanctuary given it. Truth will grow where the fertilizer that nourishes it is also truth. Faith will be its own reward ... God answers prayers. Which is another way of saying, the Universe responds ... Only as we have reason to fear what is in our hearts need we fear for the planet. Teach yourself peace. Pass it on.
Conversation is the ultimate experience of being in love. It involves self-surrender to the heart of mystery, to an uncomprehended "Who", given in a mystical way. The shift in our attention from all finite loves and hates, whether interpersonal, familial or philanthropic to concern for the Transcendent Other, available in the unmediated experience of love and awe, occurs first in that incarnate meaning that we are. We discover by God's gracious love, we are a meaningful word already spoken, a beloved whose very being is the expression of God's turning toward us. In essence, our conversion toward God is the created effect of divine love. We could not pray if God was not already invested in our hearts and mind.