Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
~Carl Jung

I've come only so far in my understanding of prayer. It is strange, or maybe fortuitous these days that one book on prayer is leading to another to another stretching from the beginning of summer until now. The books I am led to build on one another and enhance one another, though written by different authors at different times. And so I come to intercessory prayer. I've come a long way since being that nineteen year old girl who was advised while her father lay dying that if she had faith enough, his life would be spared.

And it wasn't. At that point in time, I realized that intercessory prayer was not about results. I wasn't sure what it was about but it wasn't results. Over time I've understood that intercessory prayer is about the walk itself. I've seen it as lifting the person up to God, letting God decide what that person needs. And recently I understand something more than this. After reading Etty Hillesum's journal, I've come to see prayer in a new way. I believe we all have a spark of the Divine within us. Our souls are our connection to God; our inner space is where we experience that connection. And so each day, as I pray, I remember each person and place them in that inner space, where that Divine Spark dwells. They are in Good Hands there, and I carry them with me, in my heart, throughout the day. It is a very intimate gesture, but I am compelled to speak of it as my little offering to the universe today. Shalom.