The highest level of prayer is not a prayer FOR anything. It is a deep and profound silence, in which we allow ourselves to be still and know God. In that silence, we are changed. We are calmed. We are illumined. Prayer is meant to dissolve the worldly focus, to dissolve our sense of a separate self, to help us detach from the noisy world order.
Prayer is like pouring hot water on an ice cube, melting the cold and encrusted thought forms that still surround our hearts.
To view work as a pilgrimage is to put our heart's desires to hazard, because merely by setting out, we have told ourselves that there is something bigger and better, or even smaller and better – above all something more life giving – that awaits us in our work, and we are going to seek it. We look around to see what we have for the journey and find at bottom that we possess only intuitions and imagination.