The Prophet

Today I'm re-reading The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Gibran was a Lebanese poet who lived mostly in America. His writing is somewhere between poetry and prose, and sounds biblical. The Prophet is the fictional musings of a middle eastern prophet leaving his people. This is one of my favorite sections, where the prophet is responding to a priestess who asks him to speak to them about prayer. 

I cannot teach you how to pray in words.

God listens not to your words save when He Himself utters them through your lips.

And I cannot teach you the prayer of the seas and the forests and the mountains.

But you who are born of the mountains and the forests and the seas can find their prayer in your heart,

And if you but listen in the stillness of the night you shall hear them saying in silence,

“Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth.

It is thy desire in us that desireth.

It is thy urge in us that would turn our nights, which are thine, into days which are thine also.

We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou knowest our needs before they are born in us:

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of theyself thou givest us all.”