A crowded rag market
When you pray with feeling, where is your attention if not in the heart? Acquire feeling, and you will acquire attention as well. The head is a crowded rag market: it is not possible to pray to God there. If at times the prayer goes well and by itself, that is a good sign. It means that it has begun to be grafted to the heart. Guard your heart from attachments; try to remember God, seeing Him before you and working before His face.
--Theophan the Recluse (in Igumen Chariton of Valamo, The Art of Prayer (Faber and Faber, 1966), p. 184)
Posted by Clifton at December 5, 2006 01:36 PM | TrackBack