If we still ourselves, we can mirror the divine. But if we engage solely in the frenetic activities of our daily involvements, if we seek to impose our own schemes on the natural order, and if we allow ourselves to become turbulent ... There is no effort that we can make to still ourselves. True stillness comes naturally from moments of solitude where we allow our minds to settle. Just as water seeks its own level, the mind with gravitate toward the holy. Muddy water will become clear if allowed to stand undisturbed, and so too will the mind become clear if it is allowed to be still.
The following prayer-poem was written by Ernest L. Brown III when he was a teenager many years ago. Our gratitude to Mrs. Fredi Brown, his mother, for sharing it with us:
Why do I pray? Why do I breathe?
Why does my heart propel the blood through my body?
Why, indeed?
I pray because I must ... because prayer is thought,
because prayer is the Nature of God.
What else can be compared to that peculiar comfort,
that indefinable calm that comes stealing over me when,
perplexed and confused, I have turned to God,
simply dropped my burdens and problems,
and flung myself into the Creator's protecting arms?
There is a spirit in us, I am told.
No one with human eyes may see this spirit;
no one may touch it with flesh-and-blood hands.
Yet when I pray I can feel it,
and then it may be said that spirit has talked with Spirit.
Not with words, for there is no need of words.
The spirit in us has touched, recognized and accepted the Lord.
All else has been lost, dropped, forgotten.
No need to remember, to fret and strive after remembering.
I have touched God -- not with my intellect,
my twisted straining thoughts,
not with human-trained logic --
but with something within me which is the spirit in us,
the Christ Indwelling.
Thus it is that I pray -- because I want to be comforted ...
because I want to be strengthened, directed, led ...
because I want to be healed, happy, solvent, loving, loved.
Because I believe that God can give me answers
when I have none of my own, I pray.