Prayer is the act of attempting to communicate, commonly with a sequence of words, with a deity or spirit for the purpose of worshipping, requesting guidance, requesting assistance, confessing sins, as an act of reparation or to express one's thoughts and emotions. The words of the prayer may take the form of intercession, a hymn, incantation or a spontaneous utterance in the person's praying words. Secularly, the term can also be used in referring too "hope".
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Prayer invites the Eternal Presence to suffuse or spirits and let God's will prevail in our lives. ~ Shaarei Tefillah- He spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.
- Then Jesus told his disciples…that they should always pray and not give up.
- Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
- Mark 1:35
- To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! ... that is what I call prayer.
- Claude Debussy, quoted in Claude Debussy: His Life and Works (1933) by Léon Vallas
- Prayer is not an asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is a daily admission of one's weakness.
- Mahatma Gandhi in Young India (23 September 1926)
- In spite of despair staring me in the face on the political horizon, I have never lost my peace. In fact, I have found people who envy my peace. That peace, I tell you, comes from prayer; I am not a man of learning, but I humbly claim to be a man of prayer. I am indifferent as to the form. Every one is a law unto himself in that respect. But there are some well-marked roads, and it is safe to walk along the beaten tracks, trod by the ancient teachers.Well, I have given my personal testimony. Let every one try and find that as a result of daily prayer, he adds some thing new to his life, something which nothing can be compared.
- Mahatma Gandhi in Young India (24 September 1931), also in Teachings Of Mahatma Gandhi (1945), edited by Jag Parvesh Chander, p. 457
- Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real.
- Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in The Ways and Power of Love : Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transfomration (2002) by Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin, Ch. 18 : The Techniques of Altruistic Transformation (concluded), p. 339
- Prayer needs no speech. I have not the slightest doubt that prayer is an unfailing means of cleansing the heart of passions. But it must be combined with the utmost humility.
- Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in The Ways and Power of Love : Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transfomration (2002) by Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin, Ch. 18 : The Techniques of Altruistic Transformation (concluded), p. 339
- Prayer invites the Eternal Presence to suffuse or spirits and let God's will prevail in our lives. Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, or mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a ruined city; but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will.
- Prayer based on statements of Abraham Joshua Heschel in Shaarei Tefillah (Gates of Prayer, a siddur). Quoted in The Jewish Moral Virtues (1999) by Eugene B. Borowitz and Frances Weinman Schwartz
- Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God; it is a sincere seeking for a good thing; and it is a concentration on the thing sought, with faith that it is obtainable.
- Peace Pilgrim, in Peace Pilgrim : Her Life and Work in Her Own Words (1994), p. 75
See also
- Worship
External links
Wikipedia has an article about: Prayer Look up Prayer in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Category: Religion
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