prayer

My life has been just stressful enough lately that I've been relying a lot more on the power of prayer...which means that the stress has been very, very good. This was an entry in January's issue of Magnificat that's been on my mind ever since:

"One of the most unusual sonnets in English is George Herbert's poem simply titled "Prayer." It is a list of analogies, without a main clause and verb, as if the poet were struggling to capture, by one means after another, something of prayer's deep mystery. For prayer is indeed mysterious. God is infinitely far above us; the absolute, in whom we live and move and have our being. Yet he prompts us to fling our lifeline across that abyss. What does God allow us to do to him, when we pray - and what does he in turn do to us?"

Prayer, the Church's banquet, Angels' age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heaven and earth;
Engine against th' Almighty, sinners' tower,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing-spear,
The six-days' world-transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
The land of spices; something understood.