Why is community a near-universal experience—especially for people of faith? One person put it this way: "Community is God's strategy for reaching the world." That's a neat way of saying that as community—rather than as individuals—we model what God has in mind for humanity.
Quiet, contemplative prayer happens when we are still and open ourselves to the Spirit working secretly in us, when we heed the psalmist's plea: "be still and know that I am God." These are times when we trustingly sink into God's formless hands for cleansing, illumination, and communion. Sometimes spontaneous sounds and words come through us in such prayer, but more often we are in a state of quiet appreciation, simply hollowed out for God. At the gifted depth of this kind of prayer we pass beyond an image of God and beyond any image of self. We are left in a mutual raw presence. Here we realize that God and ourselves quite literally are more than we can imagine.