Once I can recognize the divine image where I don't want to see the divine image, then I have learned how to see. It's really that simple. And here’s the rub: I’m not the one that is doing the seeing. It's like there is another pair of eyes inside of me seeing through me, seeing with me, seeing in me. God can see God everywhere, and God in me can see God everywhere.
Notice the very final prepositions of the Eucharistic prayers - "through Him, with Him, and in Him." They recognize that great prayer isn’t anything I can generate. It is done to me. "Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me," one saint* said. It is always being done to me, and all I can do is get out of the way.
Richard Rohr, adapted from Contemplative Prayer (CD)
This is so deeply true. Prayer isn't, shouldn't be, what we do so much as what God does in us. As Paul explains in Romans 8:26-27, "the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God."
*(Actually it was DH Lawrence)
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