Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Quotable #1
From Ralph Emerson's "Self-Reliance," (a personal favorite essay of mine):
Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It suppoes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action.

But then, what does a 19th-century, transcendentalist, Unitarian minister have to say me about prayer, right?

posted by Peter at 9:24 AM
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