Teach me how to pray. Pray thou thyself in me.   Amen.

This prayer ends with words very similar to “Prayer at the Beginning of the Day,” also by Philaret of Moscow. Since I already wrote something, I asked my friend, Bill Albritton, if he’d do the honors…

In Mere Christianity old friend C.S. Lewis writes:

“An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get in touch with God…God is the thing to which he is praying – the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing which is pushing him on – the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers.”( Lewis, C.S.; Mere Christianity, New York: Touchstone; Simon & Schuster, 1996)

God praying in us, God praying on our behalf, God listening to our praying. Yet at the same time, we remain ourselves – not dissolved into God, but very much ourselves in our praying. Perhaps that’s what prayer really is: God being God, we being who we are, held by love in time and space.    Amen.