Praying All the Time

This is Richard Rohr, whom I've talked about and quoted before.

Prayer is largely just being silent: holding the tension instead of even talking it through, offering the moment instead of fixing it by words and ideas, loving reality as it is instead of understanding it fully. Prayer is commonly a willingness to say “I don’t know.” We must not push the river, we must just trust that we are already in the river, and God is the certain flow and current.

I really love the "willingness to say 'I don't know'". Never thought of this being a prayer. If that's the case, then I'm praying all the time!

I guess in my heart of hearts somehow I realized that what I always perceived as mystery would remain so as I got older. But commonly I'll tell people that I'm surprised at the amount of confusion and befuddlement that attends this aging process. What I'm saying is, "I guess not really." It's just sort of a different flavor and vibe to it now. Somehow the "I don't know" seems . . . well, right. The way it's supposed to be. I'm afraid in my case, though, it leads to an overage of contempt, rather than sympathetic understanding, of all those people out there who think they've got it figured out. Even allowing for the fakers--those who act like they've got it figured out, but don't--that still leaves millions upon millions who go to preposterous lengths to defend their own certainties.