The Power of Prayer

.........The mind is the eye of the world.  When the mind changes, the world is different.  In a transferred sense, the prayerful presence transfigures everything.  We will never understand the power of our prayer to effect change and to bring shelter to others.
We should pray also for those who suffer each day: those in prison, hospital, mental institutions, refugees, prostitutes, the powerful, the destroyers.  There are so many broken places where our prayer is needed each day.  We should be generous with our prayer.  It is important to recognize the extent and intensity of spirit that prayer awakens and sends out.
Prayer is not about the private project of making yourself holy and turning into a shining temple that blinds everyone else.  Prayer has a deeper priority which is, in the old language, the sanctification of the world of which you are a privileged inhabitant.  By being here you are already a custodian of sacred places and spaces.  If you could but see what your prayer could do, you would always want to be in the presence that it awakens.

.......The sun is the mother of life. She gives her light so generously and evenly all over the earth.  Like the sun each one of us should share the light of our souls with generosity.

                                                Extract from "Eternal Echoes" by John O'Donohue.