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Reflections from Our Co-Pastors
Thursday, February 9, 2023
A Prayer Can Arise in the Dancing
Have you ever awakened in the morning and a song, or a saying enters your head?
Try this one on:
“In a moment of stillness I danced. And my dance became a prayer.”
How can dance become a prayer? It may become a prayer when the whole body feels itself move, and heart and spirit come together in the One Spirit; that One Spirit takes over. Maybe our prayer is the movement of chopping a carrot or of sitting beside someone we love or doing the laundry. The movement itself becomes the prayer; no words are necessary. Somewhere deep inside is a stillness, maybe placed there as a gift, maybe grown there through practice. A stillness that is untouched by anything, pure.
Stillness is required for us to find the core of our being and touching it we breathe and there is a prayer. When we find that stillness and we speak, and our words are from God. Silence of the mind brings us to the stillness and sometimes the stillness is a gift, and we are filled or emptied. Our awareness of the stillness, our practice of it, and our openness to it, allows its conscious presence.
I Shall Keep the Silence of My Heart by St. Teresa of Calcutta
I don’t think there is anyone who needs God’s help and grace as much as I do. Sometimes I feel so helpless and weak. I think this is why God uses me. Because I cannot depend on my own strength, I rely on [God] twenty-four hours a day. All of us must cling to God through prayer. My secret is simple: I pray. Through prayer I become one in love with Christ. I realize that praying to [Christ] is loving [Christ].
We cannot find God in noise and agitation. Nature: trees, flowers, grass grow in silence. The stars, moon, and the sun move in silence. What is essential is not what we say but what God tells others through us. In silence [God] listens to us; in silence [God] speaks to our souls. In silence we are granted the privilege of listening to [God’s] voice.
Silence in our eyes.
Silence in our ears.
Silence in our minds.
…In the silence of the heart God will speak.
Mother Teresa, cited in The Power of Prayer (New York: MJF Books, 1998), 3,7-8, taken from United States Catholic Catechism for Adults (Washington, D.C.: USCCB, 2006), 479-480.
Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay
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