Informal Prayer Quotes

Stop entertaining two faced people. You know the ones who have split personalities and untrustworthy habits. Nine times out of ten if they telling you stuff about another person, they're going to tell your business to other people. If they say, "You know I heard........." More than likely it's in their character to share false information. Beware of your box, circle, square! Whatever you want to call it.

So what do you do when you are stuck? The first thing I do when I am stuck is pray. But I’m not talking about a quick, Help me Lord, Sunday’s a comin’ prayer. When I get stuck I get up from my desk to head for my closet. Literally. If I‘m at the office I go over to a corner that I have deemed my closet away from home. I get on my knees and remind God that this was not my idea, it was His… None of this is new information to God… Then I ask God to show me if there is something He wants to say to prepare me for what He wants me to communicate to our congregation. I surrender my ideas, my outline and my topic. Then I just stay in that quiet place until God quiets my heart… Many times I will have a breakthrough thought or idea that brings clarity to my message. . . Like you, I am simply a mouthpiece. Getting stuck is one way God keeps me ever conscious of that fact.

You are not here to verify,/ Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity/ Or carry report. You are here to kneel/ Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more/ Than an order of words, the conscious occupation/ Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

said Father Nash “was a most wonderful man in prayer, one of the most earnest, devout, spiritually-minded, heavenly-minded men I ever saw. . . . He labored about in many places in central and northern New York, and gave himself up to almost constant prayer, literally praying himself to death at last. I have been informed that he was found dead in his room in the attitude of prayer.

TO BE asked to minister without an informing vision of God (which is what theology is really all about), however, is like being told to make bricks without straw. What keeps people going in ministry, and what, in my experience, congregations are longing for, is an exciting and empowering vision of God, articulated in a theology that is integrated with worship, prayer, and social action.

What's that you're doing, Sassenach?" "Making out little Gizmo's birth certificate--so far as I can," I added. "Gizmo?" he said doubtfully. "That will be a saint's name?" "I shouldn't think so, though you never know, what with people named Pantaleon and Onuphrius. Or Ferreolus." "Ferreolus? I dinna think I ken that one." He leaned back, hands linked over his knee. "One of my favorites," I told him, carefully filling in the birthdate and time of birth--even that was an estimate, poor thing. There were precisely two bits of unequivocal information on this birth certificate--the date and the name of the doctor who's delivered him. "Ferreolus," I went on with some new enjoyment, "is the patron saint of sick poultry. Christian martyr. He was a Roman tribune and a secret Christian. Having been found out, he was chained up in the prison cesspool to await trial--I suppose the cells must have been full. Sounds rather daredevil; he slipped his chains and escaped through the sewer. They caught up with him, though, dragged him back and beheaded him." Jamie looked blank. "What has that got to do wi' chickens?" "I haven't the faintest idea. Take it up with the Vatican," I advised him. "Mmphm. Aye, well, I've always been fond of Saint Guignole, myself." I could see the glint in his eye, but couldn't resist. "And what's he the patron of?" "He's involved against impotence." The glint got stronger. "I saw a statue of him in Brest once; they did say it had been there for a thousand years. 'Twas a miraculous statue--it had a cock like a gun muzzle, and--" "A what?" "Well, the size wasna the miraculous bit," he said, waving me to silence. "Or not quite. The townsfolk say that for a thousand years, folk have whittled away bits of it as holy relics, and yet the cock is still as big as ever." He grinned at me. "They do say that a man w' a bit of St. Guignole in his pocket can last a night and a day without tiring." "Not with the same woman, I don't imagine," I said dryly. "It does rather make you wonder what he did to merit sainthood, though, doesn't it?" He laughed. "Any man who's had his prayer answered could tell yet that, Sassenach." (PP. 841-842)

Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I knew beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid. I thought how terrible the nights must have been in a time when men knew the things were there and were deadly. But no, that's wrong. If I knew they were there, I would have weapons against them, charms, prayers, some kind of alliance with forces equally strong but on my side. Knowing they were not there made me defenseless against them and perhaps more afraid.

You are not here to verify, instruct yourself, or inform curiosity or carry report. You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more than an order of words, the conscious occupation of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

As it happens with many people who do not trouble about religion in the ordinary trend of life, I hastily invented a soft, warm, tear-misty God, and whispered an informal prayer. Let me get there in time, let him hold out till I come, let him tell me his secret. Now it was all snow: the glass had grown a grey beard.

Jesus wasn't so much handing out information as reshaping our imaginations.

As a prayer popper, I stay in touch with God. I send lots of spiritual postcards. Little bits and bytes of adoration, supplication, and information attached prayer darts speed in God's direction all day long.

God’s purpose in prayer is not for us to inform or persuade Him to respond to our needs but to open sincere and continual lines of communication with Him. Prayer, more than anything else, is sharing the needs, burdens, and hungers of our hearts with a God who cares. He wants to hear us and commune with us more than we could ever want to commune with Him, because His love for us is so much greater than our love for Him.

The purpose of prayer is not for the disciple to give information to God. The purpose of prayer is intimacy with God.

introverts often feel more freedom in worship services that feature traditional liturgy than they do in ones that feature more open, informal, unstructured styles of worship. Introverts often appreciate the depth of liturgical prayers and hymns, as well as the rich symbolism that fill traditional churches.

Now I would solicit the particular attention of those numerous people who imagine that money is everything in this world, and that rank and ability are inseparable from wealth: let them observe that Cincinnatus, the one man in whom Rome reposed all her hope of survival, was at that moment working a little three-acre farm (now known as Quinctian meadows) west of the Tiber, just opposite the spot where the shipyards are today. A mission from the city found him at work on his land - digging a ditch, maybe, or ploughing. Greetings were exchanged, and he was asked - with a prayer for God's blessing on himself and his country - to put on his toga and hear the Senate's instructions. This naturally surprised him, and, asking if all were well, he told his wife Racilia to run to their cottage and fetch his toga. The toga was brought, and wiping the grimy sweat from his hands and face he put it on; at once the envoys from the city saluted him, with congratulations, as Dictator, invited him to enter Rome, and informed him of the terrible danger of Minucius's army.

Here we are, practitioners of memos:     We send e-mail and we receive it,     We copy it and forward it and save it and delete it.     We write to move the data, and                 organize the program,                 and keep people informed—     and know and control and manage.   We write and receive one-dimensional memos,         that are, at best, clear and unambiguous.     And then—in breathtaking ways—you summon us to song.

She was a passionate reader, and she thought that reading was one of the noblest efforts of all; in contrast, she found writing to be a great waste of time—a childish self-indulgence, even messier than finger painting—but she admired reading, which she believed was an unselfish activity that provided information and inspiration. She must have thought it a pity that some poor fools had to waste their lives writing in order for us to have sufficient reading material. (page 236)

We must each of us do our home work. 'My people are destroyed,' said Hosea, 'for lack of knowledge.' We must be wise as serpents; for as the Apostle Paul said, We wrestle against the rulers of darkness, against spiritual wickedness in high places. We are going through what J. Reuben Clark once termed the greatest propaganda campaign of all time. We cannot believe all we read, and what we can believe is not all of genuine value. We must sift. We must learn by study and prayer. Study the scriptures and study the mortals who have been most consistently accurate about the most important things. When your freedom is at stake, your information best be accurate.

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning. There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives. 2. Myth: Prayer works. Studies have now shown that inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of the subject. 3. Myth: Atheists are immoral. There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominantly non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies. 4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with science. In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. We have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion. 5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive death. We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. 6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view. 7. Myth: Believing in God is not a cause of evil. The examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the justification for their evils on humankind are too numerous to mention. 8. Myth: God explains the origins of the universe. All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it is all going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law 'create' or 'build' a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, 'loves' us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? 9. Myth: There's no harm in believing in God. Religious views inform voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight.

Epiphanies aren’t lightning bolts. They are a hummed note, a prayer mumbled constantly, brought to the surface given the right conditions. It’s as if I am always hearing three ways, first shallowly, collecting, then one level deeper as I’m processing, and finally, I am hearing with my body, which is when I’m hearing myself. That’s one way, for me, information combines with experience and becomes knowledge. I wish there were a shortcut.

Owing to the lack of serious and informed popular interest in real issues, we have the current Republican menu of pseudo-issues: abortion, gay marriage, flag burning, prayer in schools, sharia law, and so on. They are simple to grasp and well within the ambit of the average person who does not follow politics.

Line up some “multidimensional” support. When it’s nose-to-the-grindstone time, we tend to get the grindstone kind of people on board—suppliers, designers, editors, marketers, “work/task” people. But this is precisely the time when you need some spiritually informed intelligence to back you up: a naturopath, a trainer, green smoothies, a prayer group. All that woo-woo love and insight will go a long way in helping you navigate the heavy-duty logistics on a daily basis.

I found myself one evening in the dreams of the night, in that sacred building, the Temple. After a season of prayer and rejoicing, I was informed that I should have the privilege of entering into one of those rooms, to meet a glorious personage, and as I entered the door, I saw, seated on a raised platform, the most glorious Being my eyes have ever beheld, or that I ever conceived existed in all the eternal worlds. As I approached to be introduced, he arose and stepped towards me with extended arms, and he smiled as he softly spoke my name. If I shall live to be a million years old, I shall never forget that smile. He took me into his arms and kissed me, pressed me to His bosom, and blessed me, until the marrow of my bones seemed to melt! When He had finished, I fell at His feet, and as I bathed them with my tears and kisses, I saw the prints of the nails in the feet of the Redeemer of the world. The feeling that I had in the presence of Him who hath all things in His hands, to have His love, His affection, and His blessings was such that if I ever can receive that of which I had but a foretaste, I would give all that I am, all that I ever hope to be, to feel what I then felt (as cited in Bryant S. Hinckley, The Faith of Our Pioneer Fathers, pp. 226-27.)

We ought to contemplate providence not as curious and fickle persons are wont to do but as a ground of confidence and excitement to prayer. When he informs us that the hairs of our head are all numbered it is not to encourage trivial speculations but to instruct us to depend on the fatherly care of God which is exercised over these frail bodies.

The safest course for an Infinite Way student to follow is to admit freely that he does not know how to pray, how to go out or come in, or what to pray for, and then open himself in receptivity to that still small Voice which is within, closer than breathing, and let It pray through him, let It utter Its voice, let It have Its way. If you are praying for someone else, let It inform you, let It inform your patient or your student. Do not try to be Omniscience yourself in your praying, because you can be Omniscience only when you are completely absent from the personal sense of self, when you are absent from any knowledge, when you have attained that place of unknowing in which you definitely know that you do not know, and do not even want to know, but are willing and open to receive spiritual wisdom, spiritual guidance, spiritual strength. When you are praying or meditating for someone else, do not try to transfer thoughts to him, do not try to know what is right for him or best for him, but sit in a state of complete receptivity, and then let the Father function as your consciousness. You may not receive any message for your patient or student, but you do not need any. He will receive it, and he will receive it not from you, but from the Source of you. Your consciousness acts only as the instrument of contact, and you yourself may never know what the message is, or even whether any message has been received

An informed mind is not the same thing as an enflamed heart.

-Prayer In My Life- Every person has his own ideas of the act of praying for God's guidance, tolerance and mercy to fulfill his duties and responsibilities. My own concept of prayer is not a plea for special favors, nor as a quick palliation for wrongs knowingly committed. A prayer, it seems to me, implies a promise as well as a request; at the highest level, prayer not only is supplication for strength and guidance, but also becomes an affirmation of life and thus a reverent praise of God. Deeds rather than words express my concept of the part religion should play in everyday life. I have watched constantly that in our movie work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether it deals with fable or with stories of living action. This religious concern for the form and content of our films goes back 40 years to the rugged financial period in Kansas City when I was struggling to establish a film company and produce animated fairy tales. Thus, whatever success I have had in bringing clean, informative entertainment to people of all ages, I attribute in great part to my Congregational upbringing and lifelong habit of prayer. To me, today at age 61, all prayer by the humble or highly placed has one thing in common: supplication for strength and inspiration to carry on the best impulses which should bind us together for a better world. Without such inspiration we would rapidly deteriorate and finally perish. But in our troubled times, the right of men to think and worship as their conscience dictates is being sorely pressed. We can retain these privileges only by being constantly on guard in fighting off any encroachment on these precepts. To retreat from any of the principles handed down by our forefathers, who shed their blood for the ideals we all embrace, would be a complete victory for those who would destroy liberty and justice for the individual.

But the for serious offline impact of 09/11 was the continual contact, continuous contact, it encouraged. On 09/12 everyone went out and bought phones. The mobiles, the cells. Suddenly, to lose touch was to die, and the only prayer left for anyone who felt buried whether under information or debris was for a signal strong enough to let their last words outlive them on voicemail.

Be informed here and now that incessant prayers does  not finger God to open the Windows of heaven. What God wants to see Is your passion towards success and your giving drive...nothing else!

The clerks at the bank who turned over our information. The fake attorney. The man who gave me free hot chocolate at Hertzoon’s fake office. I destroyed them all, one by one, brick by brick. And Rollins will be the last. These things don’t wash away with prayer, Wraith. There is no peace waiting for me, no forgiveness, not in this life, not in the next.” Inej shook her head. How could she still look at him with kindness in her eyes? “You don’t ask for forgiveness, Kaz. You earn it.” “Is that what you intend to do? By hunting slavers?” “By hunting slavers. By rooting out the merchers and Barrel bosses who profit off of them. By being something more than just the next Pekka Rollins.” It was impossible. There was nothing more. He could see the truth even if she couldn’t. Inej was stronger than he would ever be. She’d kept her faith, her goodness, even when the world tried to take it from her with greedy hands. His eyes scanned her face as they always had, closely, hungrily, snatching at the details of her like the thief he was—the even set of her dark brows, the rich brown of her eyes, the upward tilt of her lips. He didn’t deserve peace and he didn’t deserve forgiveness, but if he was going to die today, maybe the one thing he’d earned was the memory of her—brighter than anything he would ever have a right to—to take with him to the other side.

Prayer is when we direct our thoughts to God/the universe; meditation is when we listen back. It is not unusual to get downloads of information from the Other Side while meditating, because it creates a beautiful space for us to “listen back.

Prayer is one of the most important means of grace that we have to strengthen our faith. Prayer is not for God's benefit. We don't pray to give Him information that otherwise He would not have. We don't pray to give God our counsel so as to improve His administration of the universe. Rather, prayer is for our benefit. It is a God-given way for us to spend time with Him, to praise and thank Him, and to make our requests known to Him. Afterward, when we get up from our knees, we watch the providence of God work in our lives.

There is a vast difference between being a Christian and being a disciple. The difference is commitment. Motivation and discipline will not ultimately occur through listening to sermons, sitting in a class, participating in a fellowship group, attending a study group in the workplace or being a member of a small group, but rather in the context of highly accountable, relationally transparent, truth-centered, small discipleship units. There are twin prerequisites for following Christ - cost and commitment, neither of which can occur in the anonymity of the masses. Disciples cannot be mass produced. We cannot drop people into a program and see disciples emerge at the end of the production line. It takes time to make disciples. It takes individual personal attention. Discipleship training is not about information transfer, from head to head, but imitation, life to life. You can ultimately learn and develop only by doing. The effectiveness of one's ministry is to be measured by how well it flourishes after one's departure. Discipling is an intentional relationship in which we walk alongside other disciples in order to encourage, equip, and challenge one another in love to grow toward maturity in Christ. This includes equipping the disciple to teach others as well. If there are no explicit, mutually agreed upon commitments, then the group leader is left without any basis to hold people accountable. Without a covenant, all leaders possess is their subjective understanding of what is entailed in the relationship. Every believer or inquirer must be given the opportunity to be invited into a relationship of intimate trust that provides the opportunity to explore and apply God's Word within a setting of relational motivation, and finally, make a sober commitment to a covenant of accountability. Reviewing the covenant is part of the initial invitation to the journey together. It is a sobering moment to examine whether one has the time, the energy and the commitment to do what is necessary to engage in a discipleship relationship. Invest in a relationship with two others for give or take a year. Then multiply. Each person invites two others for the next leg of the journey and does it all again. Same content, different relationships. The invitation to discipleship should be preceded by a period of prayerful discernment. It is vital to have a settled conviction that the Lord is drawing us to those to whom we are issuing this invitation. . If you are going to invest a year or more of your time with two others with the intent of multiplying, whom you invite is of paramount importance. You want to raise the question implicitly: Are you ready to consider serious change in any area of your life? From the outset you are raising the bar and calling a person to step up to it. Do not seek or allow an immediate response to the invitation to join a triad. You want the person to consider the time commitment in light of the larger configuration of life's responsibilities and to make the adjustments in schedule, if necessary, to make this relationship work. Intentionally growing people takes time. Do you want to measure your ministry by the number of sermons preached, worship services designed, homes visited, hospital calls made, counseling sessions held, or the number of self-initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Jesus? When we get to the shore's edge and know that there is a boat there waiting to take us to the other side to be with Jesus, all that will truly matter is the names of family, friends and others who are self initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Jesus because we made it the priority of our lives to walk with them toward maturity in Christ. There is no better eternal investment or legacy to leave behind.

In the skids, the tumbles, the spins, there was, truly, as Saint-Exupéry had said, only one thing you could let yourself think about: What do I do next? Sometimes at Edwards they used to play the tapes of pilots going into the final dive, the one that killed them, and the man would be tumbling, going end over end in a fifteen-ton length of pipe, with all aerodynamics long gone, and not one prayer left, and he knew it, and he would be screaming into the microphone, but not for Mother or for God or the nameless spirit of Ahor, but for one last hopeless crumb of information about the loop: “I’ve tried A! I’ve tried B! I’ve tried C! I’ve tried D! Tell me what else I can try!” And then that truly spooky click on the machine. What do I do next? (In this moment when the Halusian Gulp is opening?) And everybody around the table would look at one another and nod ever so slightly, and the unspoken message was: Too bad! There was a man with the right stuff. There was no national mourning in such cases, of course. Nobody outside of Edwards knew the man’s name. If he were well liked, he might get one of those dusty stretches of road named for him on the base. He was probably a junior officer doing all this for four or five thousand a year.

I'm like a shark," Janie said. "I need to keep moving or die, which means I need to expand-" she stopped there. Her own father's business was successful mainly because he kept expanding, kept moving onward and upward. The only difference was Dan Westerveld didn't have a spouse who gambled away all available equity in the house and business. But Janie kept that information to herself. Neither her sister nor her parents knew how dire her financial situation was. "What do you mean? And you're kind of struggling as it is." "And that's why I need to expand. I'm just trying to make sure I can sustain my current lifestyle, which is hardly extravagant." "I'll say. I can't believe that beater of a car of yours is still running." "Regular maintenance helps." And prayer, Janie thought. Something she spent a lot of time on these days.

sacred pathways Naturalist — finds God in nature Ascetic — is drawn to disciplines Traditionalist — loves historical liturgies Activist — comes alive spiritually in a great cause Caregiver — meets God in serving Sensate — senses God through five senses Enthusiast — loves to grow through people Contemplative — is drawn to solitary reflection and prayer Intellectual — loves God by learning (For more information on these categories, read

the Platonized eschatology so popular over many centuries (how will my soul get to heaven?) has played host to a moralized anthropology (what’s to be done about my sin?), generating a quasi-pagan soteriology (God killed Jesus instead of punishing me).11 This has been assumed to be what Paul was saying in these letters. More specifically, when people express “faith” in this line of thought, they are assured that they are therefore forgiven and heaven-bound. This, it has been assumed, is what Paul meant by “justification.” One can see a low-grade version of this when young persons, moved by a sermon or perhaps by an apologetic argument, say a prayer of Christian commitment and are thereupon informed that they are now “justified by faith,” that they are therefore going to heaven, and that they must not try to supplement this pure, justifying “faith” either with moral effort or with religious ritual.

We do not pray to inform God of our needs, because He knows what we need before we ask. What is prayer like for you? Is it a religious ritual that you perform out of habit? Is it a spiritual discipline that you practice because you want to be the best Christian you possibly can be? Is it a mechanism by which you can bring your “shopping list” to God in order to have your needs met? Or are you running to meet your Lover, to commune with Him, hungering to find your joy in Him, and to be fulfilled in His presence?

… AND A VOTE OF THANKS Ever since the marauding shark first came to Amity, one man has spent his every waking minute trying to protect his fellow citizens. That man is Police Chief Martin Brody. After the first attack, Chief Brody wanted to inform the public of the danger and close the beaches. But a chorus of less prudent voices, including that of the editor of this newspaper, told him he was wrong. Play down the risk, we said, and it will disappear. It was we who were wrong. Some in Amity were slow to learn the lesson. When, after repeated attacks, Chief Brody insisted on keeping the beaches closed, he was vilified and threatened. A few of his most vocal critics were men motivated not by public-spiritedness but personal greed. Chief Brody persisted, and, once again, he was proven right. Now Chief Brody is risking his life on the same expedition that took the life of Matt Hooper. We must all offer our prayers for his safe return … and our thanks for his extraordinary fortitude and integrity. Brody said aloud, “Thank you, Harry.

Two centuries ago, the United States settled into a permanent political order, after fourteen years of violence and heated debate. Two centuries ago, France fell into ruinous disorder that ran its course for twenty-four years. In both countries there resounded much ardent talk of rights--rights natural, rights prescriptive. . . . [F]anatic ideology had begun to rage within France, so that not one of the liberties guaranteed by the Declaration of the Rights of Man could be enjoyed by France's citizens. One thinks of the words of Dostoievski: "To begin with unlimited liberty is to end with unlimited despotism." . . . In striking contrast, the twenty-two senators and fifty-nine representatives who during the summer of 1789 debated the proposed seventeen amendments to the Constitution were men of much experience in representative government, experience acquired within the governments of their several states or, before 1776, in colonial assembles and in the practice of the law. Many had served in the army during the Revolution. They decidedly were political realists, aware of how difficult it is to govern men's passions and self-interest. . . . Among most of them, the term democracy was suspect. The War of Independence had sufficed them by way of revolution. . . . The purpose of law, they knew, is to keep the peace. To that end, compromises must be made among interests and among states. Both Federalists and Anti-Federalists ranked historical experience higher than novel theory. They suffered from no itch to alter American society radically; they went for sound security. The amendments constituting what is called the Bill of Rights were not innovations, but rather restatements of principles at law long observed in Britain and in the thirteen colonies. . . . The Americans who approved the first ten amendments to their Constitution were no ideologues. Neither Voltaire nor Rousseau had any substantial following among them. Their political ideas, with few exceptions, were those of English Whigs. The typical textbook in American history used to inform us that Americans of the colonial years and the Revolutionary and Constitutional eras were ardent disciples of John Locke. This notion was the work of Charles A. Beard and Vernon L. Parrington, chiefly. It fitted well enough their liberal convictions, but . . . it has the disadvantage of being erroneous. . . . They had no set of philosophes inflicted upon them. Their morals they took, most of them, from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Their Bill of Rights made no reference whatever to political abstractions; the Constitution itself is perfectly innocent of speculative or theoretical political arguments, so far as its text is concerned. John Dickinson, James Madison, James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton, George Mason, and other thoughtful delegates to the Convention in 1787 knew something of political theory, but they did not put political abstractions into the text of the Constitution. . . . Probably most members of the First Congress, being Christian communicants of one persuasion or another, would have been dubious about the doctrine that every man should freely indulge himself in whatever is not specifically prohibited by positive law and that the state should restrain only those actions patently "hurtful to society." Nor did Congress then find it necessary or desirable to justify civil liberties by an appeal to a rather vague concept of natural law . . . . Two centuries later, the provisions of the Bill of Rights endure--if sometimes strangely interpreted. Americans have known liberty under law, ordered liberty, for more than two centuries, while states that have embraced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, with its pompous abstractions, have paid the penalty in blood.

If you came this way, Taking any route, starting from anywhere, At any time or at any season, It would always be the same: you would have to put off Sense and notion. You are not here to verify, Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity Or carry report. You are here to kneel Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more Than an order of words, the conscious occupation Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying. And what the dead had no speech for, when living, They can tell you, being dead: the communication Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

Once more, one who lives in the spirit of prayer will spend much time in retired and intimate communion with God. It is by such a deliberate engagement of prayer that the fresh springs of devotion which flow through the day are fed. For, although communion with God is the life-energy of the renewed nature, our souls "cleave to the dust" and devotion tends to grow formal- it becomes emptied of its spiritual content, and exhausts itself in outward acts. The Master reminds us of this grave peril, and informs us that the true defense against insincerity in our approach to God lies in the diligent exercise of private prayer.

Changing our minds about things, especially deeply held personal and societal beliefs, is really hard. We live in a society that encourages firm and solidified opinions and values. We tend to set our opinions in stone and place them on our shelves as symbols of who we are. The problem with this is that stones can easily become idols. We attack people who change their minds, calling them a "flip flopper" and "inconsistent." Instead, we should honor and respect people who look at information and willing to learn and say, "Maybe I was wrong about this" instead of doubling down on an opinion simply because it's the one they've always held.

When Devlin returned to the Police Camp early the next morning Anna Wetherell was still unconscious; her head had lolled sideways, and her mouth was slightly agape. There was a bluish-purple bruise upon her temple, and her cheekbone was painfully swollen: had she fallen, or had she been struck? Devlin had no time to investigate, however, or to press the gaoler for more information on the circumstances of the girl’s arrest: it transpired that a man had died during the night, and Devlin was requested to accompany the physician to the Arahura Valley to assist in the collection of the dead man’s remains—and perhaps also to say a prayer or two over his body. The dead man’s name, Shepard informed him, was Crosbie Wells.

Those who tread these paths should be informed of a matter respecting their confession in which they are apt to err. When they begin to give an account of their sins, instead of the regret and contrition they had been accustomed to feel, they find that love and tranquility sweetly pervade and take possession of their souls: now those who are not properly instructed are desirous of withdrawing from this sensation to form an act of contrition, because they have heard, and with truth, that it is requisite: but they are not aware that they lose thereby the genuine contrition, which is this Intuitive Love, infinitely surpassing any effect produced by self-exertion . . . Be not then troubled about other things when God acts so excellently in you and for you.

The color-patches of vision part, shift, and reform as I move through space in time. The present is the object of vision, and what I see before me at any given second is a full field of color patches scattered just so. The configuration will never be repeated. Living is moving; time is a live creek bearing changing lights. As I move, or as the world moves around me, the fullness of what I see shatters. “Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying; it is a canvas, nevertheless. But there is more to the present than a series of snapshots. We are not merely sensitized film; we have feelings, a memory for information and an eidetic memory for the imagery of our pasts. Our layered consciousness is a tiered track for an unmatched assortment of concentrically wound reels. Each one plays out for all of life its dazzle and blur of translucent shadow-pictures; each one hums at every moment its own secret melody in its own unique key. We tune in and out. But moments are not lost. Time out of mind is time nevertheless, cumulative, informing the present. From even the deepest slumber you wake with a jolt- older, closer to death, and wiser, grateful for breath. But time is the one thing we have been given, and we have been given to time. Time gives us a whirl. We keep waking from a dream we can’t recall, looking around in surprise, and lapsing back, for years on end. All I want to do is stay awake, keep my head up, prop my eyes open, with toothpicks, with trees.

Therefore, we are led to the conclusion that growth in the spiritual life (and this is surprising to capitalists) takes place not by acquisition of something new. It isn’t like the acquisition of new information, which some call “spiritual capitalism.” In reality our growth is hidden. It is accomplished by the release of our current defense postures, by the letting go of fear and our attachment to self-image. Thus, we grow by subtraction much more than by addition. It’s not a matter of more and better information. The wisdom traditions say that information itself is not the key. Once our defenses are out of the way and we are humble and poor, truth is allowed to show itself. It is not acquired. It shows itself when we are free from ideology, fear, and anger. “I know” won’t get us anywhere. The truth is, I don’t know anything. Our real hero is Forrest Gump! Perhaps he was a metaphor for beginner’s mind. Only nonknowing is spacious enough to hold and not distort the knowing that is possible.

Sewing is a visual language. It has a voice. It has been used by people to communicate something of themselves — their history, beliefs, prayers and protests. For some, it is the only means to tell of what matters to them: those who are imprisoned or censored; those who do not know how or are not allowed to write of their lives. For them needlework can carry their autobiographies and testimonies, registering their origin and fate. Using patterns as syntax, symbols and motifs as its vocabulary, the arrangement of both as its grammar, sewing is a graphic way to add information and meaning. But is not a monologue, it is part of a conversation, a dialogue, a correspondence only fully realised once it is seen and its messages are read. It connects the maker to the viewer across time, cultures, generations and geographies. As a shared language, needlework transmits — through techniques, coded symbols, fabrics and colour — the unedited stories, not just of women, but often of those marginalised by oppression and prejudice.

Being psychological means that one will need to find the new, the personal myth from within. It will not be found in an external ideology or institution, however benignly intended it may be, for those sources which may have served the past have too often grown self-perpetuating, preserving their own priesthood or corporate leadership, and rigidifying an original primal experience into dogma and formal principles. One will find, sooner or later, that the pneuma, or spirit, has long departed those ideas and places. Nor will right thinking or rational principles of conduct and behavior satisfy the soul. We will not be spared our anxieties, moments of deep despair, and appointments with the fellow with the scythe at the door. No amount of ritual prayer, healthful practices, or salutary motives will plumb the soul’s depths. Quite likely, the soul will speak to us at least some of the time in ways we do not want to hear. But it is speaking, always, and tells of us of that invisible world, which informs, moves, and shapes the visible world.

were more than mere insects. Over time I realized the bees could tell my emotional or energetic state. When I embodied kindness around them, they treated me with the same. A cloud of exuberance surrounded us, as though the bees were templating euphoria into the air. I want you to know I didn’t just tear off my bee suit one day and “become one with the bees.” That took years. But eventually I did retire my bee suit. The first time I walked right up to the hives wearing only a T-shirt and shorts, I felt a bit anxious and self-absorbed, but then I remembered to turn my thoughts away from myself, to open myself to the bees and let them feel me out — which they did. They landed on my bare arms and licked my skin for the salty minerals. When I held a finger next to the entrance, a sweet little bee delicately walked onto my fingertip and faced me. She looked right into my eyes, and for the first time, we saw each other. And so I became part of bee life. Becoming Kin I soon found myself having more intuition about the hives. One morning in early spring, before the flowers had come into bloom, I suddenly had the idea that I should check one of my hives. I found the bees unexpectedly out of food; so I fed them honey saved from the year before. That call I intuitively heard from the hive likely saved its life. Another time I had the feeling that a distant hive in the east pasture was on the verge of swarming. When I walked up to see, sure enough, they were. Events like this taught me to trust my intuition more, and listening to my intuition continues to bring me into a closer relationship with all the hives. In my sixth year with bees, something new happened. I had begun a morning practice of contemplation, quieting my mind and opening my heart. I entered this prayerful state, asking for guidance, direction, courage, and truth. Even though I didn’t mention honeybees, they immediately began appearing in my thoughts and passing me information I had never read or learned from other sources. I believe the sincerity of my questions opened a door. When the information began coming to me, I listened with attentiveness, respect, and gratitude. The more I listened, the more information they shared. Since my first intuitive conversation with the bees, I have had many others. At first I didn’t know how to explain where the information came from, and that bothered me. I told my husband’s

These powerful words used by Paul in Second Thessalonians 3:1 convey the following ideas: “Finally, brothers, pray for us and for those things that concern us. Pray that the word of the Lord will spread quickly and without resistance. Pray that we will be able to keep up the pace that is required for us to get this message out! “To fulfill this task, we have to be like runners whose eyes are fixed on the goal before us! We must be like brave, bold, daring, and courageous messengers, whose job is to carry vital information across enemy lines. We have to move promptly and swiftly to get the message of the Gospel to the other side where people are desperately waiting. “Since the Lord has dispatched us to carry this message, and since this task requires us to run speedily through dangerous territory, we request prayer that we will be able to make it through every skirmish, clash, confrontation, and struggle that we might come across as we run to the other side to deliver the word of the Lord. I request that your prayers be unbroken, uninterrupted, and never-ending. As you pray, remember to specifically stipulate that the word of the Lord would usher in a triumphant and glorious new day in the lives of those who hear it, as it has done among you.

Charles is difficult to pigeonhole politically. Tony Blair wrote that he considered him a “curious mixture of the traditional and the radical (at one level he was quite New Labour, at another definitely not) and of the princely and insecure.” He is certainly conservative in his old-fashioned dress and manners, his advocacy of traditional education in the arts and humanities, his reverence for classical architecture and the seventeenth-century Book of Common Prayer. But his forays into mysticism and his jeremiads against scientific progress, industrial development, and globalization give him an eccentric air. “One of the main purposes of the monarchy is to unite the country and not divide it,” said Kenneth Rose. When the Queen took the throne at age twenty-five, she was a blank slate, which gave her a great advantage in maintaining the neutrality necessary to preserve that unity. It was a gentler time, and she could develop her leadership style quietly. But it has also taken vigilance and discipline for her to keep her views private over so many decades. Charles has the disadvantage of a substantial public record of strong and sometimes contentious opinions, not to mention the private correspondence with government ministers protected by exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act that could come back to haunt him if any of it is made public. One letter that did leak was written in 1997 to a group of friends after a visit to Hong Kong and described the country’s leaders as “appalling old waxworks.

Missy and I became best friends, and soon after our first year together I decided to propose to her. It was a bit of a silly proposal. It was shortly before Christmas Day 1988, and I bought her a potted plant for her present. I know, I know, but let me finish. The plan was to put her engagement ring in the dirt (which I did) and make her dig to find it (which I forced her to do). I was then going to give a speech saying, “Sometimes in life you have to get your hands dirty and work hard to achieve something that grows to be wonderful.” I got the idea from Matthew 13, where Jesus gave the Parable of the Sower. I don’t know if it was the digging through the dirt to find the ring or my speech, but she looked dazed and confused. So I sort of popped the question: “You’re going to marry me, aren’t you?” She eventually said yes (whew!), and I thought everything was great. A few days later, she asked me if I’d asked her dad for his blessing. I was not familiar with this custom or tradition, which led to a pretty heated argument about people who are raised in a barn or down on a riverbank. She finally convinced me that it was a formality that was a prerequisite for our marriage, so I decided to go along with it. I arrived one night at her dad’s house and asked if I could talk with him. I told him about the potted plant and the proposal to his daughter, and he pretty much had the same bewildered look on his face that she’d had. He answered quite politely by saying no. “I think you should wait a bit, like maybe a couple of years,” he said. I wasn’t prepared for that response. I didn’t handle it well. I don’t remember all the details of what was said next because I was uncomfortable and angry. I do remember saying, “Well, you are a preacher so I am going to give you some scripture.” I quoted 1 Corinthians 7:9, which says: “It is better to marry than to burn with passion.” That didn’t go over very well. I informed him that I’d treated his daughter with respect and he still wouldn’t budge. I then told him we were going to get married with him or without him, and I left in a huff. Over the next few days, I did a lot of soul-searching and Missy did a lot of crying. I finally decided that it was time for me to become a man. Genesis 2:24 says: “For this reason [creation of a woman] a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” God is the architect of marriage, and I’d decided that my family would have God as its foundation. It was time for me to leave and cleave, as they say. My dad told me once that my mom would cuddle us when we were in his nest, but there would be a day when it would be his job to kick me out. He didn’t have to kick me out, nor did he have to ask me, “Who’s a man?” Through prayer and patience, Missy’s parents eventually came around, and we were more than ready to make our own nest.

with the KABIRI. And we have shown that the latter were the same as the Manus, the Rishis and our Dhyan Chohans, who incarnated in the Elect of the Third and Fourth Races. Thus, while in Theogony the Kabiri-Titans were seven great gods: cosmically and astronomically the Titans were called Atlantes, because, perhaps, as Faber says, they were connected (a) with At-al-as "the divine Sun," and (b) with tit "the deluge." But this, if true, is only the exoteric version. Esoterically, the meaning of their symbols depends on the appellation, or title, used. The seven mysterious, awe-inspiring great gods—the Dioscuri,[420] the deities surrounded with the darkness of occult nature—become the Idei (or Idaeic finger) with the adept-healer by metals. The true etymology of the name lares (now signifying "ghosts") must be sought in the Etruscan word "lars," "conductor," "leader." Sanchoniathon translates the word Aletae as fire worshippers, and Tabor believes it derived from Al-Orit, "the god of fire." Both are right, as in both cases it is a reference to the Sun (the highest God), toward whom the planetary gods "gravitate" (astronomically and allegorically) and whom they worship. As Lares, they are truly the Solar Deities, though Faber's etymology, who says that "lar" is a contraction of "El-Ar," the solar deity, is not very correct. They are the "lares," the conductors and leaders of men. As Aletae, they were the seven planets -- astronomically; and as Lares, the regents of the same, our protectors and rulers—mystically. For purposes of exoteric or phallic worship, as also cosmically, they were the Kabiri, their attributes being recognised in these two capacities by the name of the temples to which they respectively belonged, and those of their priests. They all belonged, however, to the Septenary creative and informing groups of Dhyan Chohans. The Sabeans, who worshipped the "regents of the Seven planets" as the Hindus do their Rishis, held Seth and his son Hermes (Enoch or Enos) as the highest among the planetary gods. Seth and Enos were borrowed from the Sabeans and then disfigured by the Jews (exoterically); but the truth can still be traced about them even in Genesis.[421] Seth is the "progenitor" of those early men of the Third Race in whom the "Planetary" angels had incarnated—a Dhyan Chohan himself, who belonged to the informing gods; and Enos (Hanoch or Enoch) or Hermes, was said to be his son—because it was a generic name for all the early Seers ("Enoichion"). Thence the worship. The Arabic writer Soyuti says that the earliest records mention Seth, or Set, as the founder of Sabeanism; and therefore that the pyramids which embody the planetary system were regarded as the place of sepulchre of both Seth and Idris (Hermes or Enoch), (See Vyse, "Operations," Vol. II., p. 358); that thither Sabeans proceeded on pilgrimage, and chanted prayers seven times a day, turning to the North (the Mount Meru, Kaph, Olympus, etc., etc.) (See Palgrave, Vol. II., p. 264). Abd Allatif says curious things about the Sabeans and their books. So does Eddin Ahmed Ben Yahya, who wrote 200 years later. While the latter maintains "that each pyramid was consecrated to a star" (a star regent rather), Abd Allatif assures us "that he had read in Sabean books that one pyramid was the tomb of Agathodaemon and the other of Hermes" (Vyse, Vol. II., p. 342). "Agathodaemon was none other than Seth, and, according to some writers, Hermes was his son," adds Mr. Staniland Wake in "The Great Pyramid," p. 57. Thus, while in Samothrace and the oldest

True Prayer is the work of relationship, where He moves them from mere information about Him to a one-on-one experience with Him, so that now when they talk about “knowing God,” they mean more than, “I understand what you’re saying about God,” but also, “It fits my experience of Him.

This body of iniquity records all of the sins committed by prior generations, and it is precisely from this information that sin grows and manifests itself. This information is not removed through a general prayer, such as, “Lord erase all my iniquities.” Sin, rebellion and iniquity require observation and an exhaustive analysis of our heart.

But Green returns to the most important way that Christianity spread — through the extended household (oikos) evangelism done informally by Christians. A person’s strongest relationships were within the household — with blood relatives, servants, clients, and friends — so when a person became a Christian, it was in the household that he or she would get the most serious hearing.8 If the head of the household (Greek, oikos) became a believer, the entire home became a ministry center in which the gospel was taught to all the household’s members and neighbors. We see this in Acts 16:15, 32–34 (Lydia’s and the jailer’s homes in Philippi); Acts 17:5 (Jason’s home in Thessalonica); Acts 18:7 (Titius Justus’s home in Corinth); Acts 21:8 (Philip’s home in Caesarea); and 1 Corinthians 1:16; 16:15 (Stephanas’s home in Corinth). The home could be used for systematic teaching and instruction (Acts 5:42), planned presentations of the gospel to friends and neighbors (Acts 10:22), prayer meetings (Acts 12:12), impromptu evangelistic gatherings (Acts 16:32), follow-up sessions with the inquirers (Acts 18:26), evenings devoted to instruction and prayer (Acts 20:7), and fellowship (Acts 21:7).

Ecclesiastical officials have placed a votive prayer box beneath a mural of the Virgin Mary, and the box is continuously emptied and refilled during two annual pilgrimage days. When the box is full, the chapel officials bless the votive messages and then, to my enormous exasperation, burn them. Despite my repeated requests, they never have allowed me to examine these scraps of paper, adamantly informing me that these are messages from believers to God. That relationship clearly does not include a third-party ethnologist.

Prayer is not so much about informing God as it is about getting in tune with God. What are His concerns for the world, the Church and my (or your) personal direction? What is His will on earth?

What have you learned," says Manuel, "out yonder?" "I cannot tell you," replied Ruric, laughing sillily, "but in place of it, I will tell you a tale. Yes, yes, Count Manuel, I will tell you a merry story of how a great while ago our common grandmother Eve was washing her children one day near Eden when God called to her. She hid away the children that she had not finished washing: and when the good God asked her if all her children were there, with their meek little heads against His knees, to say their prayers to Him, she answered, Yes. So God told her that what she had tried to hide from God should be hidden from men: and He took away the unwashed children, and made a place for them where everything stays young, and where there is neither good nor evil, because these children are unstained by human sin and unredeemed by Christ's dear blood." The Count said, frowning: "What drunken nonsense are you talking at broad noon? It is not any foolish tatter of legend that I am requiring of you, my boy, but civil information as to what is to be encountered out yonder." "All freedom and all delight," young Ruric told him wildly, "and all horror and all rebellion.

To pray is not to bring the weight of calculated logic to the prayer, for that is our attempt to inform the mind of God. Rather, it is to bring the whole of our hearts to the prayer, for that is us pleading for the heart of God.

Our [theological] study informs our prayers, and our prayers enliven our study. We cannot choose between prayer and study; faithful theology requires prayerful study.

This was informal, like most things in Alaska. Something we’d noticed already in our brief stay. People wore the clothes that were most comfortable for them, and obviously, that wasn’t any different in Faith Hospital. They weren’t taken aback by my appearance or haphazard stop. The causal family atmosphere drew me in, and I prayed silently for God’s guidance.

[It] strikes me that my morning walks are like Post-it Notes to myself, the kind my mom put on my bathroom mirror when I was a kid. Unlike hers, they convey no information—no went to Star Market, no clean up your room. They just say: look around, go slowly, feel yourself a part of something bigger than yourself. Such a Post-it on my bathroom mirror would make me cringe. But to write and read it by walking just feels practical. Without the walk, I feel as though I’ve forgotten to do something important, something without which the rest of my day will go sideways. At bottom, maybe that’s what prayer is. A kind of note to yourself, with your God looking on, written in your religion’s handwriting, to remind you of whatever you think you need to be reminded of—to remind you how to live a better life. Maybe all the major religions knew that how you started your day would effectively be a prayer anyway, that whatever you do every morning, whatever frame you give to your day, effectively becomes what you worship.

As we read the Bible, we are all the time gathering information, wrestling with the sense of obscure sentences, comparing and analyzing. But this is secondary. The real purpose of Bible study is much more than this—to feed our love for Christ, to kindle our hearts into prayer, and to provide us with guidance in our personal life.

None of the English were sufficiently skilled in the Indian language to make a prayer in it, and the meeting was opened with a prayer in English, but one of the company, in a discourse in the Indian tongue, began with the moral law and a brief explication of it, and the wrath and curse of God the just portion of the breakers of this law, and then informed them of the coming of Christ into the world to recover mankind from sin and the punishment of it, his sufferings and death, resurrection and ascension, and that he would come again at the end of the world to be the judge of all men.

You are not here to verify, Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity Or carry report. You are here to kneel Where prayer has been valid.

The healing sequence in the Records is energy first, information second. While information is exciting, it does not always have the presence or force necessary to inspire change. That is why energy is more important than information.

Prayer isn’t giving God information to act upon but God giving us intimacy to rest in.

For more than two centuries, black people had resisted Christianity, often with the tacit acquiescence of their owners. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Christian missionaries who attempted to bring slaves into the fold confronted a hostile planter class, whose only interest in the slaves' spirituality was to denigrate it as idolatry. Westward-moving planters showed little sympathy with slaves who prayed when they might be working and even less patience with separate gatherings of converts, which they suspected to be revolutionary cabals. An 1822 Mississippi law barring black people from meeting without white supervision spoke directly to the planters' fears. But the trauma of the Second Middle Passage and the cotton revolution sensitized transplanted slaves to the evangelicals' message. Young men and women forcibly displaced from their old homes were eager to find alternative sources of authority and comfort. Responding to the evangelical message, they found new meaning in the emotional deliverance of conversion and the baptismal rituals of the church. In turning their lives over to Christ, the deportees took control of their own destiny. White missionaries, some of them still committed to the evangelical egalitarianism of the eighteenth-century revivals, welcomed black believers into their churches. Slaves - sometimes carrying letters of separation from their home congregations - were present in the first evangelical services in Mississippi and Alabama. The earliest religious associations listed black churches, and black preachers - free and slave - won fame for the exercise of 'their gift.' Established denominational lines informed much of slaves' Christianity. The large Protestant denominations - Baptist and Methodist, Anglican and Presbyterian - made the most substantial claims, although Catholicism had a powerful impact all along the Gulf Coast, especially in Louisiana and Florida. From this melange, slaves selectively appropriated those ideas that best fit their own sacred universe and secular world. With little standing in the church of the master, these men and women fostered a new faith. For that reason, it was not the church of the master or even the church of the missionary that attracted black converts; they much preferred their own religious conclaves. These fugitive meetings were often held deep in the woods in brush tents called 'arbors.' Kept private by overturning a pot to muffle the sound of their prayers, these meetings promised African-American spirituality and mixed black and white religious forms into a theological amalgam that white clerics found unrecognizable - what one planter-preacher called 'a jumble of Protestantism, Romanism, and Fetishism.' Under the brush arbor, notions of secular and sacred life took on new meanings. The experience of spiritual rebirth and the conviction that Christ spoke directly to them armed slaves against their owners, assuring them that they too were God's children, perhaps even his chosen people. It infused daily life with the promise of the Great Jubilee and eternal life that offered a final escape from earthly captivity. In the end, it would be they - not their owners - who would stand at God's side and enjoy the blessing of eternal salvation.

In preparation for his New York Times Magazine story about one woman’s heart transplant experience, he had the opportunity to attend a Valentine’s Day party held for more than one hundred heart transplant recipients. Almost every recipient reported “spiritual memories,” or feelings of the energy of their donor. Siebert writes, “All the people I met at the party spoke in the same reverent tones about the angel in their chests, about this gift, this responsibility they now bear, and the little prayer they say to the other person inside them. It was as if they were part of some strange new cult, the tribe of the transplanted.”28 No one forgets that they have another person’s heart in their chest, and Siebert acknowledges that no matter how hard we try to see the heart as “just a pump,” every heart transplant recipient seemed to “re-inform themselves with a larger spiritual significance.

Acknowledgment of spirit as an energy that is carried in all living things and available to assist through all living things. This acknowledgment is accomplished through prayer. Each step in the ceremony begins with a prayer that acknowledges the specific representative and provides it with the information needed to support and heal the participants. • Acknowledgment of the channel that spirit expresses or presents itself through. Channels are all life-forms from a blade of grass to the tiniest insect, and the helpers within the ceremony (the elements of nature that are part of the ceremony and the human beings who support and assist with the delivery of the ceremony). • Acknowledgment of the flow of energy. Energy naturally flows from a high to a low point and/or from a strong to a weak point. It flows this way to fill and nurture gaps.

Language - given to us to glorify God, to receive the revelation of God, to witness to the truth of God, to offer praise to God - is constantly at risk. Too often the living Word is desiccated into propositional cadavers, then sorted into exegetical specimens in bottles of formaldehyde. We end up with godtalk: Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word ... Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?' My concern is that we use God's gift of language in consonance with the God who speaks.

It’s important to note that Jesus lived three decades before he began his ministry. It seems that he prayerfully and patiently took the time to understand the spiritual and social landscape that surrounded him. He preached and prophesied as one who was informed. He recognized the idolatry, could name the oppression, and truly saw the people who were treated unjustly by the powers that be.

In the spring of 1519, the Bishop of Coventry received word that certain families were teaching their children the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments in English. The bishop ordered the arrest of Mr. Hatchets, Mr. Archer, Mr. Hawkins, Mr. Bond, Mr. Wrigsham, Mr. Landsdale and Mrs. Smith. While they were held at an abbey outside of town, their children were brought to Greyfriar’s Monastery in Coventry. The boys and girls were made to stand before Friar Stafford, the abbot. One by one, Stafford interrogated the children about their parents’ beliefs. “Now then,” he told them, “I charge you in the name of God to tell me the whole truth—you shall suffer severely for any lies you tell or secrets you conceal.” “What do you believe about the church and the way to heaven?” he asked them. “Do you go to the services of the parish church? Do you read the Scriptures in English? Do you memorize the Lord’s Prayer or other Scriptures in English?” After getting from the children’s own lips the information he needed to convict their parents, he warned them. “Your parents are heretics!” he bellowed. “They have led you away from the teachings of the church. You are never to meddle again with the Lord’s Prayer or the Ten Commandments or any other Scriptures in English. And if you do—rest assured you will burn at the stake for it!” The next day, the six fathers and Mrs. Smith stood before a panel of judges that included the bishop and Friar Stafford. After presenting the evidence against them—and because the men had been warned before by the bishop not to persist in their Lollard ways—the men were condemned to death by burning. But since this was Mrs. Smith’s first offense, the court dismissed her with a warning not to teach her children the Scriptures in English anymore under pain of death. It was late in the evening when the court dismissed, so the bishop’s assistant decided to see Mrs. Smith home in the dark. As they walked out into the night, he took her arm to lead her across the street. Hearing the rattling of papers within her sleeve, he stopped and said, “Well, what do you have here?” He grabbed her arm, reached into the sleeve and pulled out a little scroll. Under the light of a lantern, he read it and found that it contained handwritten in English the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Apostle’s Creed. “Well, well,” he said with a sneer. “Come now, this is as good a time as any!” He dragged her back again to the bishop. The panel quickly sentenced her to be burned with the six condemned men and sent her off to prison to await her fate. A few days later, guards led Mrs. Smith and the Lollard men to an open space in the center of Coventry known as Little Park. They tied them to a stake and burned them to death for the crime of teaching their children the Word of God in English.

The very act of compiling information about your Deity can be its own prayer. It

The hardest bit of information to extract is the first piece.

September 9 A Prayer about Wisdom If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. (James 1:5) Heavenly Father, how I praise you for free and full access into your presence, all the time, all because you have declared all your children to be perfectly righteous in your Son, Jesus. And I praise you that as I come today seeking wisdom, I’m kissed by your welcome and inundated with your generosity. Indeed, I really need your wisdom, Father, about a few matters that currently confuse me, all of them centering on who I am as a relational person. However you wish to inform my heart, the peace I have is that you will always do so in concert with the gift of your Word. Father, I need you to show me the difference between a healthy costly investment in people’s lives versus an unhealthy entanglement and enmeshment. I know the gospel is always calling me and giving me the resources to love as Jesus loves me, but sometimes I don’t really know what that looks like. Help me, Father; help me. I need wisdom to discern the difference between rightly validating the emotions of those I love versus wrongly taking responsibility for their emotions. My broken default mode will probably always be to try to “fix” people, but I confess yet again that you are not calling me to fix anyone but to love everyone. Grant me wisdom, dear Father; grant me wisdom. I need wisdom, Father, about my own emotional world. The emotion of anger has always confused and threatened me. Help me to know when the anger I feel is nothing more than the response of a little boy not getting his way. Help me to know when the anger I swallow should be expressed appropriately, not swallowed. Help me to get angry in the face of injustice, that I might love redemptively in the face of evil. Help me to listen and seek to understand the emotion of anger in others and not rush to judgment or rush out of their story too fast. Father, just praying this prayer stirs up so many other thoughts and feelings inside my heart. My joy is in knowing that we can keep this conversation going throughout the day. My great joy is in knowing that you will give me and my friends the wisdom we need, and you will do so generously. You gave all our fault to Jesus on the cross that we might live in your permanent world of all your favor. We cry hallelujah as in your name we pray. Amen.

The purpose of prayer is not for the disciple to bring information to God; the purpose of prayer is for the disciple to experience intimacy with God.

church that was supposed to have fewer than fifty members who attended. They got themselves ready and entered the building. The church members were in prayer, when the head of this team said in as loud as voice as possible, “All right, listen up. All of you are under arrest. If you come quietly, none of you will be harmed. Follow these men out to your church bus, where we will transport you to a facility for all of you,” “Now hold on, wait just a minute. Who are you?” Looking at an iPad, the man said, “You must be Pastor Matthew Tyler. According to my information, you have thirty members, but it looks to me like you only have twenty-four. Where’s the other six?” “You still haven’t told me what business you have arresting us,” The man sighed, rolled his eyes, and replied, “We’re with the United States government. All of you, including others who have the same or similar beliefs, are all considered threats. We’re transporting you to a place that will hold all of you until such a time when we feel you’re no longer a menace to society. Now, where are the six who are missing?

Prayer is therefore not a strictly private thing. As much as we can, we should pray with others both formally in gathered worship and informally. Why? If the substance of prayer is to continue a conversation with God, and if the purpose of it is to know God better, then this can happen best in community. C. S. Lewis argues that it takes a community of people to get to know an individual person. Reflecting on his own friendships, he observed that some aspects of one of his friend’s personality were brought out only through interaction with a second friend. That meant if he lost the second friend, he lost the part of his first friend that was otherwise invisible. “By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.”221 If it takes a community to know an ordinary human being, how much more necessary would it be to get to know Jesus alongside others? By praying with friends, you will be able to hear and see facets of Jesus that you have not yet perceived. That is why, Lewis thinks, that the angels in Isaiah 6 are crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy” to one another. Each angel is communicating to all the rest the part of the glory it sees. Knowing the Lord is communal and cumulative, we must pray and praise together. That way “the more we share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.

Of course God does not need us to inform Him of what our problems are. We never give Him information He does not already have. Why then has God ordained prayer as the means through which our needs can be met and His work can be done? Prayer is meant to build our relationship with God. As we come to Him in faith pouring out our hearts before Him we are giving a visible demonstration of our belief in His promises and His goodness.

Lord. Do not doubt His power.” Only the starets was allowed to address her with such informality. She was the Matushka, Little Mother; her husband, Nicholas II, the Batiushka, Little Father. It was how the peasantry viewed them—as stern parents. Everyone around her said Rasputin was a mere peasant himself. Perhaps so. But he alone could relieve Alexie’s suffering. This peasant from Siberia with his tangled beard, stinking body, and long greasy hair was heaven’s emissary. “God has refused to listen to my prayers, Father. He

Prayer is therefore not a strictly private thing. As much as we can, we should pray with others both formally in gathered worship and informally. Why? If the substance of prayer is to continue a conversation with God, and if the purpose of it is to know God better, then this can happen best in community. C. S. Lewis argues that it takes a community of people to get to know an individual person. Reflecting on his own friendships, he observed that some aspects of one of his friend’s personality were brought out only through interaction with a second friend. That meant if he lost the second friend, he lost the part of his first friend that was otherwise invisible. “By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.”221 If it takes a community to know an ordinary human being, how much more necessary would it be to get to know Jesus alongside others? By praying with friends, you will be able to hear and see facets of Jesus that you have not yet perceived.

Unless you first do the hard work of answering those questions about a text, your meditations won’t be grounded in what God is actually saying in the passage. Something in the passage may “hit” you—but it may hit you as expressing almost the opposite of what the biblical author, inspired by the Spirit, was saying. When that happens, you are listening to your own heart or to the spirit of your own culture, not to God’s voice in the Scripture. A great number of books advise “divine reading” of the Bible today, and define the activity uncarefully as reading “not for information but to hear a personal word of God to you.” This presents a false contrast. It is certainly true that meditation personalizes the Word, but before we can meditate on what the text personally means to us and our time, we must first need to know as much as possible what the author meant to say to his readers when he wrote it.

Once more, one who lives in the spirit of prayer will spend much time in retired and intimate communion with God. It is by such a deliberate engagement of prayer that the fresh springs of devotion which flow through the day are fed. For, although intercourse with God is the life-energy of the renewed nature, our souls ‘cleave to the dust’, and devotion tends to grow formal – it becomes emptied of its spiritual content, and exhausts itself in outward acts. The Master reminds us of this grace peril, and informs us that the true defence against insincerity in our approach to God lies in the diligent exercise of private prayer.

The Binding of Isaac and the Binding of You and Me With Rosh Hashanah coming in a few weeks, it is a good time to think about some of its important lessons. The High Holy Days are a time to evaluate our relationship with important people in our lives. We ask their forgiveness, they ask ours, and if there is regret for past faults and insensitive acts (Tradition calls them “sins”), we lend forgiveness to others, and they to us. Rosh Hashanah is also a time to think about our relation with our Tradition, with Judaism. It is the Jewish New Year, and a time to reexamine where we stand with regard to the faith/culture/civilization we call Judaism. Those hearing these words have already taken significant steps toward solidifying their Jewish connections by joining a synagogue, coming to religious worship, and doing many other Jewish things in our lives. Take a few moments—even a few hours—to think about and discuss your Jewish values and priorities with your loved ones and intellectual sparring partners. How can you deepen and strengthen your Jewish ties and commitments in the coming year? Perhaps that is why we are bidden to hear the sound of the Shofar each morning for thirty days during the month of Elul, before Rosh Hashanah, as well as on the New Year itself. The Talmud, in tractate “Rosh Hashanah” (16a), tells us: “Rabbi Abahu said: Why do we use the horn of a ram on Rosh Hashanah? Because the Blessed Holy One is saying to us: If you blow a horn from a ram before Me on Rosh Hashanah, I will be reminded of the act of ultimate faith performed by Avraham when he was ready to carry out my demand, even though a ram was eventually sacrificed in place of Yitzhak. The merit of Avraham will reflect merit on you, his descendants. In fact, when you blow the Shofar, and I remember the Binding (Hebrew: Akedah) of Yitzhak I will attribute to you the merit of having bound (Hebrew: akad-tem) yourselves to me. As we begin to blow the Shofar each morning, from the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, let’s begin to think about how we bind ourselves to God. About our Jewish boundaries, the ties that bind us to our Jewish past. Let’s think of how our ritual lives can be enriched and enhanced with more song, custom, prayer and ceremony. Let’s think of how we can give ourselves to more Jewish causes (Israel, Jewish education, the synagogue), and how being Jewish can help bind and tie us to the needs of humanity (the environment, the needs of our community, the eradication of poverty and injustice). Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins

John Calvin argues that Jesus’ gifts for his people are not experienced by so many of them. That enjoyment, he says, can happen only through “communion with Christ” and “the secret energy of the Holy Spirit, by which we come to enjoy all his benefits.”277 Later he adds: “For the Word of God is not received by faith as if it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart.”278 We must not settle for an informed mind without an engaged heart.

How are we to receive God’s words? They come to us in the Scripture. The Bible says that God will put his words in the mouths of the prophets (Deut 18:15–20; Jer 1:9–10). Once a prophet receives God’s words, they can be written down and can effectively be read as God’s speech when the prophet is not present or even after he is dead and gone (Jer 36:1–32). The Bible, then, is God’s Word written, and it remains God’s Word when we read it today. The conclusion is clear. God acts through his words, the Word is “alive and active” (Heb 4:12), and therefore the way to have God dynamically active in our lives is through the Bible. To understand the Scripture is not simply to get information about God. If attended to with trust and faith, the Bible is the way to actually hear God speaking and also to meet God himself.

action. We must discover the patterns, customs, and even the habits around which they organize their lives. If we look at them and see only our own reflection, we do not know them. If we look at them and see only an “other,” an object of our scrutiny, we do not know them. Only when we know who they are with us can we claim really to know them. An exegetical process introduces us to the text. It provides some crucial biographical information, and it even discloses some of the text’s secrets. It is up to the preacher, then, to bring the life of the congregation into the text’s presence, to dwell there long and prayerfully, and to discern the reality of this text as it is with us. This is eventful. Something happens between text and people: a claim is made, a voice is heard, a textual will is exerted, and the sermon will be a bearing witness to this event. As the final step in the exegetical process, the preacher throws the first cord across the gap between text and sermon by describing the text’s claim upon the hearers, including the preacher. We are ready to move on to the creation of the sermon itself only when we can finish the following sentence: “In relation

I believe one of the most pervasive problems in contemporary Western Christianity is that we mistakenly assume that information automatically translates into transformation.

Japanese tragedy illustrates this aspect of the Trinity better than Greek tragedy, Kitamori taught, because it is based on the feeling expressed by the word tsurasa. This is the peculiar pain felt when someone dies in behalf of another. yet the term implies neither bitterness nor sadness. Nor is tsurasa burdened with the dialectical tension in the struggle with fate that is emphasized in Greek drama, since dialectic is a concept foreign to Japan. Tsurasa is pain with resignation and acceptance. Kitamori called our attention to a Kabuki play, The Village School. The feudal lord of a retainer named Matsuo is defeated in battle and forced into exile. Matsuo feigns allegiance to the victor but remains loyal to his vanquished lord. When he learns that his lord's son and heir, Kan Shusai, has been traced to a village school and marked for execution, Matsuo resolves to save the boy's life. The only way to do this, he realizes, is to substitute a look-alike who can pass for Kan Shusai and be mistakenly killed in his place. Only one substitute will likely pass: Matsuo's own son. So when the enemy lord orders the schoolmaster to produce the head of Kan Shusai, Matsuo's son consents to be beheaded instead. The plot succeeds: the enemy is convinced that the proffered head is that of Kan Shusai. Afterwards, in a deeply emotional scene, the schoolmaster tells Matsuo and his wife that their son died like a true samurai to save the life of the other boy. The parents burst into tears of tsurasa. 'Rejoice my dear,' Matsuo says consolingly to his wife. 'Our son has been of service to our lord.' Tsurasa is also expressed in a Noh drama, The Valley Rite. A fatherless boy named Matsuwaka is befriended by the leader of a band of ascetics, who invites him to accompany the band on a pilgrimage up a sacred mountain. On the way, tragically, Matsuwaka falls ill. According to an ancient and inflexible rule of the ascetics, anyone who falls ill on a pilgrimage must be put to death. The band's leader is stricken with sorrow; he cannot bear to sacrifice the boy he has come to love as his own son. He wishes that 'he could die and the boy live.' But the ascetics follow the rule. They hurl the boy into a ravine, then fling stones and clods of dirt to bury him. The distressed leader then asks to be thrown into the ravine after the boy. His plea so moves the ascetics that they pray for Matsuwaka to be restored to life. Their prayer is answered, and mourning turns to celebration. So it was with God's sacrifice of his Son. The Son's obedience to the Father, the Father's pain in the suffering and death of the Son, the Father's joy in the resurrection - these expressions of a deep personal relationship enrich our understanding of the triune God. Indeed, the God of dynamic relationships within himself is also involved with us his creatures. No impassive God, he interacts with the society of persons he has made in his own image. He expresses his love to us. He shares in our joys and sorrows. This is true of the Holy Spirit as well as the Father and Son... Unity, mystery, relationship - these are the principles of Noh that inform our understanding of the on God as Father, Son, and Spirit; or as Parent, Child, and Spirit; or as Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier...this amazing doctrine inspires warm adoration, not cold analysis. It calls for doxology, not definition.

foundational attitude for which we pray is that we might desire what gives God glory more deeply than we desire any other created reality. This spiritual freedom is so radical and so beyond our power to create in ourselves that it brings us face to face with our own poverty and our need for continual prayer. Sometimes all we can muster is the desire to desire what God desires! But any degree of hunger, any desire for God, any seeking of God’s call already happens through God’s Spirit, and God accepts it as enough. Over time, through repeated discernments and through daily living of one’s Christian life, this desire can become an increasingly natural and habitual orientation. As that transformation occurs, we experience deeper and deeper spiritual freedom. 2. Discover and name the issue or choice you face. What is really at stake is not always self-evident. An ambiguous or sprawling issue can obscure or even prevent subsequent discernment. Carefully framing the issue not only helps to clarify the matter for discernment, but it also actually begins the process of sifting and discriminating that is at the heart of discernment. 3. Gather and evaluate appropriate data about the issue. Discernment is not magic. We have to do our homework. The efficacy of the subsequent decision can rise or fall on obtaining accurate and relevant information about various options and their implications. However, since decision making is not identical to discernment, it is possible to botch a decision while still advancing in discernment. Fortunately, through grace, it is quite possible to grow in discipleship, manifest greater spiritual freedom, and hunger more strongly for what God desires in the midst of a failed decision. But prudence demands that we do the homework necessary. 4. Reflect and pray. Actually we have been praying from the outset. We pray for spiritual freedom. We select and frame the issue for discernment in prayer. We prayerfully select and consider the relevant data. But as we begin the process of discrimination in a more focused way, it is important to renew our attention to prayer. 5. Formulate a tentative decision. Many different methods can help us come to a decision, and therefore aid our discernment. We will explore seven methods in the entry points in this book, but many options exist in the tradition. Discerned decision making can employ any decision-making process, whether traditional or newly created, that fits the material being

GATHERING AND INTERPRETING INFORMATION Practice: Gathering Relevant Data The quality of a decision is directly influenced by the quality of the data gathered. That faulty data leads to less effective decisions is a truism whether or not the decision is made within a context of discernment. Just because we are discerning, we can’t presume that God will magically make up for not doing this essential step. But what sets discernment apart from other decision making is that we do assume that the very process of data gathering can be set within the context of prayer—and that is the goal of this practice. 1. Pause as you begin this reflection and each time you work on the task of gathering data. Ask for God’s gracious presence and help to seek out what is relevant to your discernment. 2. Ponder various kinds of information that will bear on your decision: —Information about yourself, your personality, history, life experience, spirituality. —Information about your relationships with family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and enemies that will affect or be affected by the decision you are contemplating. —Information about the groups, agencies, and entities that you belong to or interact with or that will be operative in the decision you are contemplating. —Information about the human-made and natural environment, that is, the wide external context in which the decision is set. —Other information that will help you make an informed decision in this particular case; including, for example, background leading up to the situation you are now discerning, knowledge of the players and their relationships, projected possible out-comes—that is, anything that could impact the decision or its outcome. 3. Imagine how you can gather this relevant information. Make a plan about what information you need to gather, and outline the information-gathering process in your journal. 4. Begin gathering necessary information. As you do so, keep a record of what you find out, assembling the relevant information in a form and in an appropriate place where it will be accessible to your continuing discernment. (This process of data gathering may continue throughout your discernment.) 5. Offer this reflection and the sometimes tedious homework of data gathering back to God. Record in your discernment journal how the growing amount of data affects your discernment. Speak to God about what it reveals: about the situation, about you, and about your relationships, especially with God.

Knowledge without Truth is information without illumination and its all like icing without cake, can be sweet, but it ends up making you sick.

It can be formal or informal, spoken or silent, on our knees or laying down. How, when and where make no difference. How often doesn’t matter, but at least once per day for healthy growth is definitely recommended. What we do is all that matters (action, remember?). There are really very few rules regarding prayer. There is a school of thought that says the only rule regarding prayer is that we do not pray for selfish things: I want a new car; I want my spouse to treat me better; I want all green lights on the way home from work. For these childish and wholly selfish ones, this is true. If however we pray for the openness to accept and attract abundance into our lives, the big picture is inferred.

We must not settle for an informed mind without an engaged heart.

Prayer is not about informing or persuading God but about connecting with Him in relationship. He is looking for conversation and dialogue with

Prayer is not about informing or persuading God but about connecting with Him in relationship. He is looking for conversation and dialogue with us.

(1) Pastors: Those pastors who desire to be accurate, on-the-mark stewards of YAHWEH’s Word need to prayerfully reconsider what they were taught in seminary or other Christian settings, and re-examine the Bible with “new eyes” to see whether or not their teachings and actions line up with the Word of God—beginning with the rules, regulations, works and theologies of their own respective denominations (all of which were man-made). (2) Congregations: If pastors refuse to follow the example of Yeshua (our Savior’s given, Hebrew Name which means “YAHWEH Saves” or “YAHWEH is Salvation”), our Torah observant, seventh day Sabbath and Feast keeping Savior, then their congregations have the responsibility to exit the churches, forget about what they’ve been taught and, with the help of the Holy Spirit, begin their own journeys into The Word! Matthew 7:13 tells us that most people will NOT be entering through the “narrow gate that leads to life” and so it is imperative that you at least be able to make up your own mind about Torah from an informed perspective, before you decide to accept or reject it.