Prayer Is Not So Much A Way

To Some Men Peace Merely Means The Liberty To Exploit Other People Without Fear Of Retaliation Or Interference. To Others Peace Means The Freedom To Rob Others Without Interruption. To Still Others It Means The Leisure To Devour The Goods Of The Earth Without Being Compelled To Interrupt Their Pleasures To Feed Those Whom Their Greed Is Starving. And To Practically Everybody Peace Simply Means The Absence Of Any Physical Violence That Might Cast A Shadow Over Lives Devoted To The Satisfaction Of Their Animal Appetites For Comfort And Pleasure.

I Am Willing To Admit That Some People Might Live There For Years, Or Even A Lifetime, So Protected That They Never Sense The Sweet Stench Of Corruption That Is All Around Them - The Keen, Thin Scent Of Decay That Pervades Everything And Accuses With A Terrible Accusation The Superficial Youthfulness, The Abounding Undergraduate Noise, That Fills Those Ancient Buildings.

The Things We Really Need Come To Us Only As Gifts, And In Order To Receive Them As Gifts We Have To Be Open. In Order To Be Open We Have To Renounce Ourselves, In A Sense We Have To Die To Our Image Of Ourselves, Our Autonomy, Our Fixation Upon Our Self-willed Identity.

The Sky Is My Prayer, The Birds Are My Prayer, The Wind In The Trees Is My Prayer, For God Is All In All.

I Suppose What Makes Me Most Glad Is That We All Recognize Each Other In This Metaphysical Space Of Silence And Happening, And Get Some Sense, For A Moment, That We Are Full Of Paradise Without Knowing It.