Prayer is like water. Will that affirmation make anyone raise an eyebrow?
To say that prayer is “as intimate as breathing” invites us to think about our own breathing: our own connection with it, a source of our existence (without which we can´t survive, not even a few minutes).
Is there something, someone, more intimate than our breathing? Here is our challenge: think, feel, breathe in and breathe out, relax, enjoy. Again!
Breathing permeates my whole being. It becomes part of me; still, I have to invite the air to come in, and if I don’t, it doesn’t come, even though I am surrounded by it.
So yes, there is something more intimate than air: water. Water is me. Depending on my age, I am 50% to 70% water. Scientists tell us that about 70% of the surface of our blue planet is water.
I don’t have to call water to come into me, to be part of me. I don’t have to call God to come, to be with me. God is me, is part of me, of you, and of the planet. We are one.
Prayer is simply and profoundly becoming aware of the awesome creatures we are. We are permeated with God, part of God. As Paul says, we are immersed in God (Acts 17, 28).
Becoming aware of that is to be part of a process of transformation. It is somehow to channel our love, which, like an inner watershed, channels all my “waters” all those and all which I love, into the big river of life.
As religious, we know intimately that prayer is the source of our love, of our life. If we explore how intimate that love is, how much a part of our being it is, we find that we are identified by prayer. As the water in us, like the water on the planet, we are one with all.
How does prayer make an impact on my ministry?
People aware of being one with the One exude a certain light, a certain brightness. Is that ministry?
When gazing at the blue planet, I get transported to a better place within myself, a place of beauty and possibility, a place of love and water and life for all. I guess, I hope, people see that in us or through us.
Sister, you are “blue.” Isn’t that ministry? You’re a beautiful watershed!
Magda Bennasar Oliver