Quotes About Prayer

Prayer is the supreme way to be workers together with God.

I, retired in prayer, will always be with you, and together we will move ahead with the Lord in certainty. The Lord is victorious.

We are both going to pray that we may live together all our lives and die the same day.

She closed her eyes and put her hands over her face. Dear God, he had suffered too.

After all, Ignatius of Loyola, a soldier who had killed and whored and made a thorough mess of his soul, said you could judge prayer worthwhile simply if you could act more decently, think more clearly afterward. As D.W. once told him, "Son, sometimes it's enough just to act less like a shithead.

He was aware of his agnosticism, and patient with it. Rather than deny the existence of something he couldn't perceive himself, he acknowledged the authenticity of his uncertainty and carried on, praying in the face of his doubt.

Everything, even sweeping, scraping vegetables, weeding a garden and waiting on the sick could be a prayer, if it were offered to God.

Activity not rooted in prayer is mere bombast and flurry. It may raise a great deal of dust and deafen many an ear, but it will never make a dent on things eternal. Activity which takes its strength from prayer and which looks to contemplatives to fill up its measure, just as contemplatives look to God's infantry to satisfy the burning missionary drive in their own hearts, will have God Himself for its eternal monument.

Faith is not a feeling, she says. It's a set of actions. By taking the actions, you demonstrate more faith than somebody who actually has experienced the rewards of prayer and so feels hope.

Patti proposes that I pray to accept whatever reality I'm in, staying alert for practical solutions rather than issuing orders in prayer. It takes discipline to stop beseeching the heavens for wheelbarrows of gold

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done?

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

And as with prayer, which is a dipping of oneself toward the light, there is a consequence of attentiveness to the grass itself, and the sky itself, and to the floating bird. I too leave the fret and enclosure of my own life. I too dip myself toward the immeasurable.

I'd seen their hoofprints in the deep needles and knew they ended the long night under the pines... I was thinking: so this is how you swim inward, so this is how you flow outward, so this is how you pray. (from poem, Five A.M. in the Pinewoods)

there is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted— each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, every morning, whether or not you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not you have ever dared to pray.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done?

Is a prayer a gift, or a petition, or does it matter? The sunflowers blaze, maybe that's their way. Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.

I know a lot of fancy words. I tear them from my heart and my tongue. Then I pray.

I have my ways of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing. — Mary Oliver, from "How I Go to the Woods," Swan: Poems and Prose Poems (Beacon Press, 2010)

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Surely once in a life God will grant the earnest entreaty of a loving heart.

The sour smell was not the smell of fungus. It was unlit incense, and cold ashes, and unsaid prayers. I

Fill your soul with love and gratitude. Pray for the world. Share the message of love. And let us flow as long as we live.