The following explanation of a LIFE-LINE was the preface to my first Life-Line posted on January 11, 2016: “As I am offering it, a Life-line is meant to point the way, to guide us to safety, to deliver food that nourishes us, or to keep us tethered to reality. A life-line has the capacity to enliven us or awaken us to what matters most. It might break us open or move us deeply or make us laugh or cry. Some days the line might challenge or indict us or give us pause. Other days a Life-line might not be all bells and whistles yet might comfort us, give us hope, make us feel less alone, or simply confirm something we already know. Come back to the Life-line throughout the week. Listen for what it is offering you.”

Today’s Life-Line:

Prayer should be as simple as breathing, as simple as living. . . But when we make a great issue out of prayer — that’s one reason why I don’t like to talk about prayer much — is as soon as you make an issue out of it, it tends to become confusing. It tends to get distorted. It becomes a cause. The great cause of prayer. And then it becomes opposed to something else which is not prayer. And then you get into this break — prayer is something sacred and then you have other things which are secular and you have to keep them apart. And that’s a confusion. ’cause breathing is neither sacred nor secular. You just breathe. So prayer too should be neither sacred nor secular. I don’t regard prayer as a specifically sacred activity. It’s life. It is our life. It comes from the very ground of our life — anyways, we should not divide prayer against the rest of our life.

~ Thomas Merton, from a talk on prayer he gave in the 1960’s to the novices at Gethsemane monastery.

ARTWORK: (Image of Merton) by André Carrilho. Learn more about the artist HERE.

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