In my life-long impatience, how much I have missed. Last night, washing the dishes, I really looked at my iron frying pan in the dishwater. The light made visible for a moment a tiny rainbow—a light through water revealing all the colors of life. It is so easy to miss the tiny symbols. Finding them is quite different from the business of trying to hatch up big symbolic experiences. It is RECOGNITION, not PURSUIT, of meaning—recognition of the sacramental, of the intersection of the two worlds, breaking through unsought because one is ATTENDING.
There are many different kinds of prayer. Yet all prayer has one basic purpose. We pray not to get something, but to open up a two-way street between us and God so that we (and others) may inwardly become something beautiful that we share with others.