As mystics know so well, just as there is no one word or name adequate to address G-d, there is no one image that is big or deep enough to capture the essence of prayer. So, like the mystics, I continue to offer a variety of images in the hope that one might touch or break open something from your own experience.

In the parlance of the day, it is a compliment of the highest order when it is said of someone who has succeeded in the eyes of the world, “She never forgot where she came from,” or “He still remembers where he’s from.” When this or something like it is spoken by someone from the old neighborhood it usually means that, despite the person’s new found or hard-earned notoriety, he is not too big for his britches, he is humble, grateful for what he learned from and among us and that he knows he couldn’t have done it without us. It means she knows that we knew her before she became famous, that to us she is more than what she does, however great, and that we loved her then, love her now, and would love her still in the future even if she weren’t famous.

Prayer happens whenever we remember where we come from – or from whom we come or that we come from, that we are created, not merely caused, or worse yet, not a self-made man or woman. Sometimes it is just a flash, an epiphany so fleeting we wonder if it was real at all. Other times it might be an extended moment entered into slowly and deliberately. Sometimes it is triggered by something that takes us by surprise or takes our breath away. In these moments we might become aware of Something More, some unsayable truth to which we feel intimately or inextricably connected that lies beyond human conception or language. It might come as a feeling of being part of the holy communion of all life, or as a sense of being known by or belonging to an ineffable but personal Someone. And often it comes with the residual hint of home or the sense of going home or being home.

There is a well-known story told by Thomas Keating, one of the modern architects of Centering Prayer. After offering an introductory teaching on this contemplative form of silent imageless and wordless prayer in which a non-uttered word is used to bring the pray-er’s mind and heart back to its silent center of presence whenever their mind wanders, he invited the attendees into a twenty-minute silent sit. When the twenty-minute silent prayer period was over a Catholic sister raised her hand and said, “Father, my mind wandered and got distracted a thousand times.” To which Keating famously responded. “Ah, that’s a thousand times to return to God.” Prayer is always a returning home.

At its core, this prayer is always a recognition or response. It may manifest itself in us in any number of ways: as a smile, total immersion in the moment, a knowing awareness, laughter, quiet weeping, an acknowledging nod or deep sigh, a silent “aha,” or a whispered “thank you.” It is as likely to be triggered by something mundane or seemingly insignificant as by something amazing or spectacular. Grace visits us in many disguises ready to walk us home.

Often the substance of the prayer is deeper than any content that can be given to it. Later it might be transposed into a form — a song or poem or painting or a dance — or into a feeling — a new sense of trust or joy, humility or gratitude, awe or a sense of oneness, longing or even as intense sadness.

Looking back on such moments, whatever the impetus or our spontaneous response, it often seems that during it we were somehow the least self-conscious and yet the most truly ourselves. At one and the same time the most at home and the most intensely homesick.♦