Prayer as a Wave

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The prayerful kneading is like a piece of death because you don’t know where it’s going to take you and you have absolutely no say. Nor could you nor should you.

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So what more to say of the kneading except that it is full of terror? Is that why people don’t go to this wonderful place? Is this why we avoid intimacy with our God? The immersion – in God – is like body surfing within the megawaves, the ones that hold you down forever and rub your nose in sand. Your mouth, your shoulders, slide in the strong feel of reality, the sweetness in the core of turbulence. Can you survive this power? And you stand up stupefied in the water, look behind you and see an even bigger wave coming up. And then you pray to God that God’s own wave won’t kill you. And the kneading begins again.

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PRAYER AS ACTION

So that for you the realm known as providence waits on the other side of prayer, can only be found there, and you must ride, or be carried, through your own annihilation to get there. Captives go free but first are captives. A true prayer must be a kind of action, a form of change, a behavior that leaves you changed. The verb in the prayer is the oar that rows you closer – yes but closer? closer to where? Closer to where the prayer itself is going. You cannot say that place before you are there. And words fail you when you are there.

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PRAYER AS THE EAR CHEWING WHAT IT HEARS

Therefore, for you, ugly Dave, listening to reality’s word became a most active passivity. The ear moved and changed within the word it heard. And this was not only like chewing food but also like being chewed by one’s food.

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A PEACE INSIDE THE ROAR

Prayer was the peace in the midst of the roar. It was perhaps found nowhere else. There was no other access road. In prayerspace all people of faith gathered together. The rest of the world was there too but with a different look a different feel. A different slant of light fell on all things and made a different kind of shadow. Things were softened and loosened. That was because they were now prayed for.

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PRAYER AS TEMPORARY OR TEMPORAL

One of the requirements for being here was that you had to step back out again. God was going to pull you like dough back into the world. You didn’t want to go.... but on the other hand, it was God’s world to which you were called or called back.

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