R. Pinchas of Korzec
“People think that they pray to God. But this is not the case. For prayer itself is the very essence of God.
Naomi Levy from Talking to God
On traditional prayers
Canonized prayers contain ancient and eternal wisdom and are central to religious experience. They are dependable and beautifully written. Often set to sublime music, they link us to our community when we recite them together and to our history when we remember that these very words were uttered centuries ago. They connect us to future generations, they will continue to inspire us for years to come. We teach them to our children…They instruct us in the articles of our belief, in our unique bond with God, and in the particular expressions of that relationship. But, what are to do when the prayer book does not contain the words we are looking for?
On prayer
Prayer is a way to reach out to God, to share our deepest yearnings, secret wishes, even our unspeakable sins. Prayer does not only connect us to God, it also forces us to become intimately acquainted with our own souls. Most of all, prayer helps us to remember our hopes – for ourselves, for our loved ones, for this world – and gives us the strength and courage to realize whatever we most desperately long to achieve. But prayer is not an end in itself. It is a beginning. It is an opening up…Prayer ignites us to act. Instead of proceeding in a state of numb indifference, it resurrects our outrage, our anger, our longing, our faith, our strength…A prayer that leads nowhere is a prayer in vain.
A.J. Heschel on Prayer
(From I Asked for Wonder)
"Worship is a way of seeing the world in the light of God.”
“Prayer may not save us, but prayer makes us worth saving.”
“We do not step out of the world when we pray; we merely see the world in a different setting. The self is not the hub, but the spoke of the revolving wheel. In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.”
“We do not feel that we possess a magic power of speaking to the Infinite; we merely witness the wonder of prayer, the wonder of man addressing himself to the Eternal. Contact with God is not our achievement. It is a gift, coming down to us from on high like a meteor, rather than rising up like a rocket. Before the words of prayer come to the lips, the mind must believe in God’s willingness to draw near to us, and in our ability to clear the path for God’s approach. Such belief is the idea that leads us to prayer.”
“The true motivation for prayer is not, as it has been said, the sense of being at home in the universe, but rather the sense of not being at home in the universe. Is there a sensitive heart that could stand indifferent and feel at home in the sight of so much evil and suffering, in the face of countless failures to live up to the will of God? On the contrary, the experience of not being at home in the world is a motivation for prayer.”
Norman Fischer from Opening to You
On Psalms
The psalms are poems. They stand at the origin point of all Western poetry, which is intimately connected with prayer…Making language is making prayer. Our utterances, whether silent or voiced, written or thought, distinct or vague, repeated or fleeting, are always essentially prayer. To speak, to intone, to form words with mouth and heart and spirit, is to reach out and reach in. What we’re always reaching out and into, even when we don’t know that we are, is the boundless unknowable.
On translation
…For many people the word God evokes parental and judgmental overtones and, even worse, false, meaningless or even negative piety associated with what they have taken to be less that perfect religious upbringings. For many religious seekers I encounter, the word God has been all by emptied of its spiritual power. Even where it is taken in a positive light it seems often reduced and tamed, representing some sort of assumed and circumscribed notion of holiness or morality.
We believe in the power of prayer to focus our attention, provide us with spiritual guidance, and nurture us with strength and inspiration.
