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Prayer is not asking for what you think you want,
by Kathleen Norris

Prayer is not asking for what you think you want,
but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine.
- Kathleen Norris

Related topics: Spiritual

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.
- Reinhold Niebuhr (Serenity Prayer)

The fog unrolls itself to be a prayer rug to the mountains.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Prayer doesn't change God, but changes him who prays
- Soren Kierkegaard

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The function of prayer is not to influence God,
but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
- Soren Kierkegaard

When you pray for anyone, you tend to
modify your personal attitude toward them.
- Norman Vincent Peale

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was,
Thank you, that would suffice.
- Meister Eckhart

Praying without ceasing is not ritualized,
nor are there even words.
It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God.
- Peace Pilgrim

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act
is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Celebrate! Celebration is an expression of Gratitude.
Gratitude is like the prayer, while
Celebration is the hymn and sacred dance.
Celebration is its own road to happiness.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Never forget the three powerful resources
you always have available to you:
love, prayer, and forgiveness.
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Today I offer a prayer of forgiveness:
forgive the pettiness of my ingratitude...
the absence of profound thankfulness.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Gratitude is the prayer,
while Celebration is the song and the dance of praise.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Lord, grant comfort, joy and health
to those I call friend,
to those I call enemy,
and to those I have cursed by my indifference.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Most people consider the course of events as natural and inevitable.
They little know what radical change are possible through prayer.
Every morning I offer my body, my mind and any ability that I posses,
to be used by Thee, O infinite creator,
in whatever way Thou dost choose to express Thyself through me.
I know that all work is Thy work, and that no task is too difficult
or too menial when offered to Thee in loving service.
- Paramahansa Yogananda

When prayer removes distrust and doubt
and enters the field of mental certainty,
it becomes faith; and the universe is built on faith.
- Ernest Holmes

Let everyone try and find that
as a result of daily prayer
he adds something new to his life,
something with which nothing can be compared.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

I offer my body, my mind
and any ability that I posses,
to be used by Thee, O Infinite Creator,
in whatever way Thou dost choose
to express Thyself through me.
I know that all work is Thy work,
and that no task is too difficult
or too menial when offered
to Thee in loving service.
- Paramahansa Yogananda

Grace isn't just a little prayer
you say before receiving a meal.
It's a way to live.
- Jackie Windspear

To be a Christian without prayer
is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Prayer is the key of the morning
and the bolt of the evening.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words
than words without a heart.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Prayer is simply a two-way conversation between you and God.
- Billy Graham

Prayer is a thought, a belief, a feeling,
arising within the mind of the one praying.
- Ernest Holmes

All the darkness of the world cannot
extinguish the light of a single candle,
yet one candle can illuminate all the darkness.
- Jewish Hanukah Prayer

"Mother Teresa Prayer"
People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
... Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you
of selfish, ulterior motives;
... Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some
false friends and some true enemies;
... Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
... Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
... Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
... Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
... Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
... Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
We can do no great things - only small things with great love.
- although commonly attributed to Mother Teresa,
who kept a copy of this prayer on
the wall of her Calcutta orphanage,
this prayer was actually written by Kent Keith.

I have been driven many times to my knees
by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere to go.
My own wisdom, and that of all about me,
seemed insufficient for the day.
- Abraham Lincoln

On this day, as on every day,
we Receive ALL of Life with Thanksgiving.
We have gratitude for EVERYTHING
that has ever occurred to bring us to this moment.
We give thanks for the joys and the sufferings,
the moments of peace and the flashes of anger,
the compassion and the indifference,
the roar of our courage
and the cold sweat of our fear.
We accept gratefully the entirety
of our past and our present life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Conversations with God are very different
from the usual nature of prayer.
Prayers are commonly only in one direction -
the one praying speaks and hopes God is listening.
Prayers also tend to focus on asking
for specific things or outcomes one wants,
rather than seeking to better understand the mind of God.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Prayer does not use up artificial energy,
doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute.
Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.
- Margaret Mead

Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement.
Properly understood and applied,
it is the most potent instrument of action.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

I give you this one thought to keep -
I am with you still - I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the sweet uplifting rush,
of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft starts that shine at night.
Do not think of me as gone -
I am with you still in each new dawn.
- Traditional Native American Prayer

Prayer:
Lord God, Holy Spirit, Giver of All Light,
Bless and Keep All Those of This World.
Grant Us Your Peace, Your Light, Your Love.
Grant Us Complete Renewal of Body, Mind and Spirit -
Continual Rebirth in Newness of Life.
Let Your Light Shine Upon Us and Be Gracious to Us.
Grant to Each and Every One of Us:
Health, Comfort, Joy, Peace Within Ourselves,
Peace Within Our Families, Peace Within Our Communities,
and Peace among All those This World.
Grant That I May Be an Instrument of Thy Peace.
Grant That I May Radiate Thy Peace, Thy Light, Thy Love,
Thy Healing, Thy Comfort, Thy Joy,
to All Those Around Me and All Those in My Thoughts
This Day and Ever More. AMEN.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
- although attributed to St. Francis of Assisi,
this prayer first appeared (written in French) in 1912

Prayer is a confession of one's own unworthiness and weakness.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul.
It is daily admission of one's weakness.
It is better in prayer to have a heart without words
than words without a heart.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.
- Rabindranath Tagore

To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows
will lead to difficulty.
- Lao Tzu

Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession
as they torment us with their loss.
- Epicurus

The true meaning of life is to plant trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
- Nelson Henderson

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
- Marianne Williamson

One does not discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide

Do not blame the thistle that you see no beauty.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Love one another but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea
between the shores of your souls.
- Khalil Gibran

A bird does not sing because it has an answer.
It sings because it has a song.
- Chinese Proverb

A ship in harbor is safe -
but that is not what ships are for.
- John A. Shedd

Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing,
of just going along,
listening to all the things you can't hear,
and not bothering.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
- Rabindranath Tagore

You do not need anyone's permission to be your true self.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Stand Tall, Stand Proud.
Know that you are unique and magnificent.
You do not need the approval of others.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
- Lao Tzu

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot

Everything has beauty,
but not everyone sees it.
- Confucius

Love means not ever having to say you're sorry.
- Erich Segal

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.
- Edmund Hillary

I am not afraid of storms
for I am learning how to sail my ship.
- Louisa May Alcott

Lord, grant that I might not so much
seek to be loved as to love.
- St. Francis of Assisi

The mind is not a vessel to be filled
but a fire to be kindled.
- Plutarch

To the people who love you,
you are beautiful already.
This is not because they're
blind to your shortcomings
but because they so clearly see your soul.
- Victoria Moran

We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past,
but by the love we're not extending in the present.
- Marianne Williamson

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
- Henry David Thoreau

Life is not supposed to be fair.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The world is perfect. It's a mess.
It has always been a mess.
We are not going to change it.
Our job is to straighten out our own lives.
- Joseph Campbell

A good traveler has no fixed plans,
and is not intent on arriving.
- Lao Tzu

The beauty does not live out there;
the beauty's in my eyes.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle,
and the life of the candle will not be shortened.
Happiness never decreases by being shared.
- The Buddha

The possession of knowledge does not
kill the sense of wonder and mystery.
There is always more mystery.
- Anais Nin

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations.
I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty,
believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
- Louisa May Alcott

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek,
but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
- Oscar Wilde

You will not be punished for your anger,
you will be punished by your anger.
- The Buddha

Thank you for visiting: Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, by Kathleen Norris.

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie