Hostility and turmoil pervade the places you don’t want to go. The spiritual darkness is palpable at noon, and the folk are too lacking in self-love to organize their lives.
The area around my church is nowhere near that bad, but still significantly distressed.
Prayer for my congregation is inseparable from prayer for that ‘hood, and I engage in such prayer every day.This prayer has evolved. Years back, I would visualize love like a brilliant white cloud, filling the neighborhood homes, moving down the neighborhood streets, coming into the stores and workplaces and schoolrooms. Following guidance, all those images gradually fell away, until now I seek merely to emanate love — no images, no thoughts, no expectations, but sheer affect.
Love is the ordering principle of the universe. Love brings harmony out of chaos.
Love is what folk need.
And in those who are receptive, it can induce the smile, the encouraging word, the helping hand; the self-love to begin to organize one’s life; the desire to create a better world.
Anyone can do this.
Maybe I was wrong at the outset. The rich can do a lot for the poor.
<– 5) Pray for the public schools.Home
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