A shot in the dark

"What's prayer?

It's shooting shafts into the dark.

It's reaching for a hand you cannot touch."

- Godric speaking, from the novel Godric  Frederick Beuchner

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at times I feel I am talking into thin air

or worse into a dense wall

my words disappear into vastness

or rebound back

heavy and unanswered

Sacred is hard to find

difficult to touch

perhaps the problem

is that I have the wrong idea about prayer

perhaps I think it is about expectations

about appeals and answers

as if God

somehow limited

and created in my image

is there to be owned by me

to fulfill my pitiable requests

but perchance prayer is more about the seeking

the searching

the reaching

the listening

and maybe the answers come in ways mysterious

in those brief moments when my fingers lightly brush Sacred

in the morning’s sun

in the howl off the wind

or in the simple lightening of

my heart