Spiritual attentiveness

Harvard Divinity Today saapui jälleen ja sisälsi mielenkiintoisia ajatuksia rukouksesta. Tässäpä pari palaa Susan Abrahamin (Assistant Professor of Ministry Studies) puheesta yhteisuskonnollisessa kiitosjuhlassa, joka liittyi vuoden 2009 valmistujaisiin. (Lainaukset englanniksi, en jaksa kääntää.)

Olen tummentanut sanoja, joita itse haluan jäädä maistelemaan ja pohtimaan.

-What is prayer? Gandhi called prayer "a longing of the soul, the most potent desire of the universe." It is a practice that uses the language of transcendence to yield understanding and knowledge "otherwise." It interrupts, ruptures, and fissures the sheerly immanent. It is a discipline of receptivity to the sacred and yields the fruits of compassion, humility, hospitality, and love. It fosters the conditions for intellectual and spiritual conversion. It sparks reconciliation. It re-enchants the world.

-... prayer is a disciplined spiritual attentiveness. It embraces paradox: the intellectual one presented in the oppositional relationship of transcendence and immanence, and the practical one of choosing between knowing and doing. As such, it is resistance and possesses a great power to reconstitute the world differently. Prayer is not the kind of dangerous quietism that permits retreat from the self, creation, other human beings, and God; it requires that we courageously embark on journeys both within and without.